TOULOUSE’S LAST TWO European Cup campaigns have ended at the hands of Leinster in Dublin, but this weekend’s showpiece in North London will be the first time the sides have ever met on neutral soil.
As such, things have gone perfectly to plan this time around as ‘Stade’ seek to adorn their badge with a sixth star at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this Saturday.
And that plan was to avoid a trip to the Aviva Stadium at all costs according to RMC journalist Wilfried Templier, who closely covers Les Toulousains.
“They had an obsession this year,” Templier told Murray Kinsella and Gavan Casey on Wednesday’s Rugby Weekly Extra podcast.
“I think they have learned that they absolutely didn’t want to play away — especially against Leinster in Dublin. They knew that they had to have a perfect pool stage to reach the final.
“Last year, they left behind a bonus point against Sale and that’s why they had to go to Leinster in the semi-final.
“So, at the beginning of the competition, it was an obsession: ‘We have to win, we have to win correctly, we have to take bonus points.’”
In the last 18 years, Leinster and Toulouse have met in six Champions Cup knockout ties. Leinster have won five of them — and they’ve won the clubs’ last three semi-final meetings (’18/19, ’22/23, ’23/24) with an average of 20 points to spare.
Toulouse’s sole knockout victory over the eastern province came in the 2010 semi-final at their city’s football stadium, where defending champions Leinster were without their rising-star out-half Johnny Sexton.
Toulouse went on to win that year’s final but their sole European title in the 14 years since came in 2020/21, when Leinster were removed from the equation by eventual beaten finalists La Rochelle.
Asked if Toulouse these days view Leinster through a similar lens to how Leinster had viewed La Rochelle until this season’s quarters, Templier replied: “Yeah, maybe. Maybe. You cannot say, ‘No.’”
“Last year, they thought they had made [sufficient] progress to beat Leinster — and then we look at the result: it was the same as the year before.”
Templier added, however, that where Toulouse will differ on Saturday from last season’s 41-22 defeat at the semi-final stage is that they will not tailor their game purely to combat Leinster’s strengths.
Their plan, he says, is to flex their own strengths. That much has been enough for Toulouse to win every game this season in which Antoine Dupont has started at scrum-half, whereas during last season’s loss at the Aviva, Stade’s talisman was shifted to 10 as Ugo Mola’s 6-2 gamble went awry.
“They have a huge respect for Leinster”, Templier said, “but I talked about that with Jean Bouilhou, the Toulouse forwards coach, and he said that last year, they wanted to rival (match up directly against) Leinster. He said to me it was the wrong way to compare because if you want to rival your opponent, it means that you think your opponent is better.
This year, they had a reflection about that: ‘We don’t have to rival with them — because we are Stade Toulousain. We have five stars on the shirt.’
“I think that quote, that sentence that he said to me, is very important in understanding Toulouse. [They know] that if you have an inferiority complex, you don’t play as you want to play. That detail is the key for Saturday.”
Murray Kinsella added: “I actually noticed something similar in an interview with Thomas Ramos recently where he was asked how much he wanted to beat Leinster and he said, ‘We don’t want to beat Leinster — we want to win the European Cup. That’s the goal.’
“It seems like such a subtle shift but it’s a powerful thing.”
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