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Battling Bath beaten by Toulouse in Champions Cup

By PA
Toulouse's French scrum-half Antoine Dupont (C) runs with the ball during the European Rugby Champions Cup Pool 2 rugby union match between Stade Toulousain (FRA) and Bath (ENG) at the Ernest-Wallon Stadium in Toulouse on January 21, 2024. (Photo by Valentine CHAPUIS / AFP) (Photo by VALENTINE CHAPUIS/AFP via Getty Images)

Bath were beaten 31-19 by Toulouse in their Investec Champions Cup clash at Stade Ernest-Wallon as the hosts finished top of Group B.

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Both sides had already qualified for the last 16 but were aiming to keep their respective unbeaten runs going in the competition.

Toulouse led 12-0 and then 19-12, with Bath hitting back on both occasions to go in level at the break, but the home side proved too strong and scored two tries deep into the second half to earn a fourth win from four.

Toulouse took the lead in the sixth minute after an incredible 20 phases, Emmanuel Meafou bundling his way over the line despite the best efforts of Josh Bayliss. A TMO review confirmed the grounding, but Thomas Ramos hit a post with the conversion attempt.

Toulouse moved 12 points in front three minutes later. Following a penalty, Antoine Dupont took a quick tap and kicked in behind the Bath defence, Ramos latching on to the long ball before touching down in the corner. This time he made no mistake with the conversion.

22m Entries

Avg. Points Scored
2.5
12
Entries
Avg. Points Scored
2.3
8
Entries

Bath struck back quickly and had a try of their own five minutes later. After winning a penalty the five-metre line-out was executed to perfection as Beno Obano ran over the line before Ben Spencer added the extras from the left touchline.

Bath were level after 23 minutes when Thomas du Toit proved too powerful for the defensive line and crossed the whitewash from close range following a five-metre tap penalty.

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Toulouse re-established their lead via a penalty try. They worked their way to within a metre of the line from a 10-metre line-out before Charlie Ewels illegally dropped the maul and was subsequently shown a yellow card.

Ramos hit a post with a penalty and Bath made Toulouse pay just before the break when Ollie Lawrence crossed to make it 19-19 at half-time.

However, Toulouse won it late on by crossing twice in the final 12 minutes.

Juan Cruz Mallia got on the end of Ramos’ kick and the win was sealed with three minutes to go when Dupont kicked behind the defence for Ramos to round off a 31-19 win.

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J
JW 2 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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