Montpellier v Toulon

First topic message reminder :

Anyone watching this? Great atmosphere in the ground before hand, spectacular minutes applause for Eric Bechu.

Montpellier playing good rugby at the minute, scored a beautiful try.

The game is ridiculously physical, two huge packs.

dave

Has Racing named a weekened side?

Awesome power from Montpellier winning it for them so far.

On a side note can Sky please sack these two commentators! Absolutely no clue about the game and only interested in talking rubbish and mentioning golden boy Gorgodze in every single sentence!

Pot Hale wrote:

valjester wrote:

LeinsterFan4life wrote:People are seriously over rating this Toulon team. They are shocking.

They are outstanding at home, it is shocking how poor they are away from home considering the talent in their squad.

I think Montpellier can still top the group if they get a bonus point win.

I think they need three or four more tries for that outcome.

As far as I can make out they would go ahead of Toulon with the bonus point and winning by a score greater than 22 points as that would put them ahead on points difference.

Wilkinson has had a shocker.

Why oh why are Toulon going for 3.....

valjester wrote:

Pot Hale wrote:

valjester wrote:

LeinsterFan4life wrote:People are seriously over rating this Toulon team. They are shocking.

They are outstanding at home, it is shocking how poor they are away from home considering the talent in their squad.

I think Montpellier can still top the group if they get a bonus point win.

I think they need three or four more tries for that outcome.

As far as I can make out they would go ahead of Toulon with the bonus point and winning by a score greater than 22 points as that would put them ahead on points difference.

Doesnt it go to tries scored before points difference?

Artful_Dodger wrote:Wilkinson has had a shocker.

Which thankfully has stopped that gobsh*te in the commentary box calling him 'his majesty'.

He's just missed another 3 pointer from infront of the posts. Terrible performance from Jonny.

Artful_Dodger wrote:Wilkinson has had a shocker.

I totaly agree with you. I was reading about wilkinson the other day, saying he was dreading the daya
he had to retire from the game all together. After today performance maybe it should the sooner the better.

Golden wrote:

valjester wrote:

Pot Hale wrote:

valjester wrote:

LeinsterFan4life wrote:People are seriously over rating this Toulon team. They are shocking.

They are outstanding at home, it is shocking how poor they are away from home considering the talent in their squad.

I think Montpellier can still top the group if they get a bonus point win.

I think they need three or four more tries for that outcome.

As far as I can make out they would go ahead of Toulon with the bonus point and winning by a score greater than 22 points as that would put them ahead on points difference.

Doesnt it go to tries scored before points difference?

I'm not sure, and Toulon won 4 tries to 1 in the first group stage so Montpellier would top the group with a bonus point if that is the case.

Edit; Just checked

Erc Rules wrote:
Quarter-finals qualification if clubs are equal:
Clubs in the same pool
(ii) if clubs are equal on points and the clubs are in the same pool, then qualification/ranking will be based on the two matches played between the clubs concerned:

(a) the club which has earned the most number of match points from the two matches (four points for a win, two points for a draw and bonus points).
(b) the club which has scored the most tries in the two matches.
(c) the club with the best aggregate points difference from the two matches.

So they just need to get a bonus point win, looking unlikely at this stage.

This game has looked like exactly what it is, a side battling for a place in the quarters and a side that felt the job had already been done with a home quarter pretty much guaranteed.

Wilkinson for the Lions anyone?

To be fair his performance today has been very uncharacteristic for him.

gelodge wrote:This game has looked like exactly what it is, a side battling for a place in the quarters and a side that felt the job had already been done with a home quarter pretty much guaranteed.

It doesn't see my previous post. Not that it matters now, game over.

So that leaves just one more qualification spot right?

Wilkos header assist of the day?

valjester wrote:

mbernz wrote:

valjester wrote:

mbernz wrote:

valjester wrote:I don't think Wilkinson is that big a blow, Toulon might actually try and play the ball through hands and they have a great backline for running rugby.

I think that's a bit unfair given that Wilkinson has played every game and the only side who have scored more tries than Toulon in this competition is Quins, Clermont being the next highest with 4 less than Toulon.

In fairness some of that can be put down to how poor Sale and Cardiff have been.

The bottom sides in most groups haven't been much better. The main point is though that Toulon have played the ball through the hands quite a bit, with 14 of their 23 tries coming through the backs.

They have though, no other group has two teams who are so abysmally off the pace. I've never said that Toulon don't play through the hands with Wilkinson in the side but his first instinct is always to kick the leather off the ball, its not something new, and its one of the most frustrating things about watching Toulon, I'm not really blaming Wilkinson though as it does seem to be a tactical decision at times.

That seems to be exactly what you were suggesting.

If Toulon have indeed been kicking the ball away more than you'd like it hasn't had too adverse effect on them getting the ball through the hands to their backs to score before today (where as others have said they didn't really turn up). Compare their 60% from the backs try scoring ratio to that of Clermont for instance who have had 10 of their 19 tries from their backs (52%). Similarily in the Top 14 only Toulouse have scored more tries than top of the table Toulon.

But how much of that is because of Wilkinson ad how much despite him

Look at the stats from today he took around 1/4 of the passes from the SH. 3/4 of the time he was not at first receiver.

Not sure where you got those stats from TJ?

The ESPN stats show that Michalak passed the ball 36 times and that Wilkinson between kicking, passing & running had the ball 18 times, which would suggest half the amount of ball Michalak passed. Of the rest of the ball Michalak passed, some may well have gone straight to Giteau (who received it 11 times in total, most would have been form Wilkinson), particularly as Wilkinson was off for a while, but as I'm sure you're aware, SHs do pass quite a bit to forwards off the base of rucks and mauls. In the Saints game today for instance, Myler & Dickson went off at pretty much the same time, Dickson passed the ball 68 times, Myler recieved the ball 39.

Wilkinson and Toulon as a whole played badly today, but in the rest of the competition and in the Top 14 they have not played in a similar fashion and trying to trend how they play in general from a bad performance doesn't make much sense.