ASM-MHR: “We want to fight”, “we changed a long time ago”, the post-match reactions of the Montpellier players

Soirée difficile pour les Montpelliérains à Clermont avant de préparer le barrage face à Grenoble. MAXPPP – MARQUET Frédéric

Largely beaten by Clermont for the last day of Top 14 (52-15), this Saturday, June 8, the Montpellier residents are already focused on their play-off match against Grenoble to ensure their survival.

Patrice Collazo, manager of the MHR: "We had a team with a lot of integrated young people, players who needed to rematch, who hadn't matched in a long time. It's a shame, there were two or three tries too many, but there was still a fierce defense. We know where we're going, but it's been three weeks since the match. we are focused on this match. While keeping, also ensuring the essentials. I liked last weekend on the state of mind and the level of play. I liked this weekend on the state of play ;#39;spirit, despite a team with a lot of turnover. We are going to mix all that and we are going to present the most competitive team possible to play in Grenoble. For three weeks, we have taken on another dimension in training, in in terms of collective and in terms of state of mind. That's positive. We left some boys at home who prepared, who trained today, who watched the Pro D2 final. Around fifteen players, plus part of the staff who remained in Montpellier. We have already changed for a long time, but what interested me was above all that today, I did not want to have a demobilized team, despite a lot of turnover in the team. I found that there was a state of mind that was quite healthy and that's quite good for the future"

Christopher Tolofua, MHR hooker: "We will especially remember the investment of youth. The fact that they were given a mission, it was a state of mind mission. Work on the points that we needed, the defense, in particular on our conquest and we are going to remember that, the first for some of our young people. If we watched the Pro D2 final or if we stayed focused on our match ? We'll say that we did a bit of both, but we still remained focused on the match that was being prepared. We had the opportunity to watch the match, of course, we prepared for that. We prepared for our match first and then we took the time to watch what was happening, of course. It's always important to have this external eye, to take the time to know who we were going to bump into and especially when we start to anticipate next week."

"Playing at our best"

Thomas Darmon, MHR flyhalf: "We know that this play-off match is very important, that there is going to be a lot at stake, but honestly, we want to see it happen. being there, we talked a little among ourselves, we don't necessarily feel any negative pressure, we just want to fight and be at this match, and save this season in this match – there, and we only think about that. No negative pressure, we really want to be there to fight it out. We've known for two weeks that we're going to play this play-off, we've already been preparing for it for some time, it makes us want to speed up the time a little, but the staff will do things well, we will have a good week of training, prepare as well as possible, and play at our best level, we will need it."