It’s a choice for the rich, Ugo Mola knows it. “Coaches who have a lot of options are happy coaches,” he observed again yesterday. I sleep a lot better when I know that Thomas Ramos, Romain Ntamack, Blair Kinghorn and Juan Cruz Mallia are available. » For the quarter-final against Exeter on Sunday, in a sold-out Ernest-Wallon stadium, the Toulouse manager and his assistants had the choice between two main options at the opening: either subject Ntamack to a third match of sharp after his long absence of more than seven months due to injury (rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament of the left knee), or give the position to Ramos definitively recovered from his contusion to the iliac crest suffered three weeks earlier in the Top 14 against the UBB. But how to choose between caviar and… caviar? “We try to be quite logical,” explains the manager. We take into account the mental and physical freshness of the guys as much as their connections with the other players, especially at the end of the match. » In this specific case, the decision to reinstate Ntamack followed a certain logic of continuity. “Romain is continuing in a position which may not have been promised to him but which is dedicated to him,” says Mola. As for Thomas, even if he performed very well with the French team during the Tournament, we don’t forget that he hasn’t played with us for two and a half months, if not a minute. and twenty seconds against the UBB (before getting injured). »
