MHR: the time for protest and questioning has come for the Montpellier players, who left to save the self-managed club ?

Entre le directeur du rugby du MHR Bernard Laporte et ses joueurs, la cassure est nette. MAXPPP – JEAN MICHEL MART

While the break seems complete between Bernard Laporte and his players, are they now capable of operating in self-management and saving the MHR from relegation. The ball is in their court, less than three weeks before the ’access-match", the most important meeting in the club’s history.

Whatever the outcome and consequences of “the’access-match” of June 16, a meeting with guillotine accents, the MHR will not escape the disastrous results of a season already listed as being the worst in the history of the club since its accession in the Top 14, in 2003.

The state of affairs is catastrophic. On Sunday, the players completed the break between the group and rugby director Bernard Laporte, without really going as far as a clash. Although they did not explicitly ask for the head of “Crazy Bernie”, they voted by 35 votes out of 38 to express their daily grievances to President Mohed Altrad.

The damage is done for Laporte

In short, they pass the hot potato to the boss, now obliged to clarify the situation and refocus everyone less than three weeks before the most dramatic match of the last twenty years .

For the moment, we do not see why or how Mohed Altrad would disavow his new liege, inducted urgently on November 19, 2023 and architect of a project running over two years, of ;rsquo;as much as the two men are closely linked in the trial accusing them of corruption and influence peddling (the date of the appeal has not yet been set).

Whatever, the damage is done for Bernard Laporte, whose last public speech, on May 9 in Midi Libre (" Whoever made this team is a crook"), will have been devastating in the bond of trust with the workforce. We perhaps do not address Carbonel, Becognée or Vincent as he would have done with Wilkinson, Matfield or Giteau in the days when he triumphed with Toulon. has the point of no return been reached ?

To see if the players will now be able to assume their pseudo-mutiny and function in self-management, as the Stade français was able to do in 2004, crowned champion of France after having had the head of coach Georges Coste in end of season. The captains' waltz, symbol of the absence of leaders, does not plead in their favor.

Are players capable of this ?

We imagine their sleepless nights and their terrible responsibility: saving the MHR from a shameful relegation to Pro D2. One thing is certain: nothing will be forgiven to the players, the main actors of the play, alone against everyone, for the better or for the scaffold.

So they decided to finally speak to each other in the eyes. But like their inconsistency on the ground, we can regret that this language of truth intervenes only one meter from the precipice. We will now have to give a hell of a lot of steering to escape the crash, without the help of Guilhem Guirado, Fulgence Ouedraogo and Benoît Paillaugue, retired since 2022 and who, looking back, literally ran the house between the three of them.

The time for questioning has come for Montpellier, whose next few weeks should be hectic behind the scenes. Will the staff (Patrice Collazo, Vincent Etcheto, Christian Labit, Antoine Battut, Bès) resist the challenge, if ever Bernard Laporte does not serve as a fuse ?