“Tonight we deserved better”, reactions after Montpellier’s defeat against La Rochelle

Geoffrey Doumayrou et le MHR se sont inclinés sur la pelouse de La Rochelle. Midi Libre – JEAN MICHEL MART

For Patrice Collazo and his men, the disappointment was great after the new defeat (18-10), conceded, this Saturday February 3 on the lawn of La Rochelle in Top 14.

Marco Tauleigne (third line of the MHR): "It's frustrating. At the end, we can have the defensive bonus penalty. We are very disappointed to leave with 0 points. We've always been in the game. It's a shame to take this test at the start of the second period. There was room to at least take the defensive bonus in this match. There are areas that we are improving on,   what we put into matches. I hope it will pay off later in the season, but it's becoming urgent to score points. When you go to La Rochelle and you come home at 6-3 at the break,  we were quite satisfied. But it’s a shame to concede these two tries when we were pretty good. The whole point is not to have cracked and not to have taken 40. We went back to the front, it is with this desire that at the end we can go and get the bonus. "

Geoffrey Doumayrou (MHR center): "On the face of the match, we deserved more than a point but in the end, we left with 0. We see that we have a lack of confidence which means that we can't get them to tip over. At some point we will have to be paid for our efforts. We make a defensive error, we pay for it in cash, and on the contrary, there are lots of little details which mean that we are unable to score. The bench in 7-1, it could have paid off because we played a very decent match up front, we responded, the response from the players was consistent. You need to reapply the heating blue."

Patrice Collazo (Montpellier manager):"We came with a precise strategy and it almost worked. So I'm disappointed for the players who deserved better with the intensity they put in. I am disappointed in the last action for Louis Carbonel who misses the defensive bonus penalty, when we see the match he had. We could have gone and picked up this bonus. It’s a bit hard yes for guys. We should have been paid this evening… For what we put in and what we produced at times. But when in a half we enter the scoring zone 6 times and leave with 3 points, there is a gap at the end. On the kick-off, we took 5 minutes of bursts but we only conceded three points afterwards we were never really beaten in defense but they are very prolific in the scoring zone . With Sam Simmonds, we discovered that we had a very good player in 12, but we are not surprised because he is a hybrid player. The exits of Serfontein and Bouthier did not impact us too much at this level. Playing a match like that after 15 days, I would have signed straight away. We are disappointed for the players, tonight we deserved better…"

"I thought only South Africans could do that"

Judicaël Cancoriet (third line of La Rochelle): "We knew that it wouldn't be easy. We were back to back at the break. We see that when we are clean on the forward play, we are able to score. Montpellier had a big pack, they hurt us, they made a lot of progress. We weren't far from breaking down but we had good team cohesion. Their bench in 7-1 ? I thought only the South Africans could do that. It’s new but before they were solid. We said to ourselves that they wanted to challenge us."

Antoine Hastoy (flyhalf of La Rochelle): "We don’need no& ;rsquo;be magnificent to win but be very good when necessary. We have produced beautiful things, even if we have not always been successful. The 7-1, we expected a little thing with Collazo but we see that Simmonds is doing well in the center. It’s not annoying. We still come away a little chewed up from this meeting… The test at the start of the second period did us a lot of good."