It’s the end of five years of waiting for the supporters of the Ain club. After leaving the Top 14 in 2018, Oyonnax is back in the elite of French rugby. It was at the end of the Pro D2 final, and after a lackluster victory against Grenoble, that Oyonnax validated its ticket for the most prestigious French Championship. Ironically, it was Grenoble who relegated the club in 2018, in the dam of accession to the Top 14 (47-22).
The Ain club had announced at the start of the season its desire to find the elite of French rugby, which it had already rubbed shoulders with twice, from 2013 to 2016 and in 2017-2018.
Sure of his strength, he assumed his ambition to the end and it is only fair sportingly as he has walked on the Pro D2 since August, with 23 wins in 30 matches and 24 points ahead of its dolphin, Grenoble precisely.
Isérois who will have a second chance to climb, next week, during a play-off, at home, against the penultimate of the Top 14, Perpignan or Pau.
This Saturday evening, the Oyomens won a very close match (14-3), in front of 19,000 spectators. In the night heat of Ernest-Wallon, the usual lair of the Rouge et Noir of the Toulouse stadium, the Rouge et Noir of Oyonnax have long shown an unusual feverishness.
Fortunately for them, their opponent too and it was not until the 35th minute of this showdown punctuated by awkwardness and indiscipline to see the first points: a try by Oyonnaxian scrum-half Charlie Cassang at the end of a long sequence of game.
His second in two weeks after the one already registered against Vannes during a complicated semi-final (26-21) which had acted as a “booster shot” after a logical relaxation once the qualification was quickly assured. The “Oyomen”, whose supporters won the match in Toulouse in the stands, necessarily sparse (12,000 spectators) so far from the Alps, were again scared in the final.
Partly because of the lack of success of their striker Jules Soulan (1 out of 4) and a lack of control in a second half played at the same off-rhythm against a generally harmless Grenoble team. But their defense held firm and winger Aurélien Callandret definitely sent them into the Top 14 with a liberating try at the very end of the match. A consecration for the English manager of Oyonnax Joe El Abd, a disciple of Christophe Urios, whom he had had as a coach before becoming his assistant, in Ain then in Castres. This is the third time in its history that Oyonnax has won the Pro D2, after its 2013 and 2017 titles. With its 22,000 inhabitants, Oyonnax will next season be the smallest town in the Top 14, in which it will replace one another, Brive.
