Toulouse have pedigree performers front to back

By TOM ENGLISH
Published on 01/04/2012 01:56

GUY Novès has one of the easier jobs in world rugby. Oh sure, there’s pressure on him at Toulouse, an insatiable desire among the support for trophies and more trophies, but what coach in the club game anywhere in the world wouldn’t embrace the stress if he was packing the kind of firepower Noves is privileged to work with?

Maxime Médard gets injured during the Six Nations? Yeah, whatever. They’ve still got Clément Poitrenaud for full-back. A doubt about the prolific Vincent Clerc? Big deal. They’ve got the Fijian Clerc in Timoci Matanavou to call on. Any doubts about Lionel Beauxis at stand-off? Just send for Luke McAlister, the 30-times capped All Black. Any issues with their international props? Well, replace them with their other international props. Same for the second-rows and the back-rows. There are heavily-capped and world-famous players kicking their heels in the reserves in Toulouse.

You wonder sometimes if Novès himself has forgotten about half of them. Rupeni Caucaunibuca, the mesmeric Fijian finisher is still on the books, but is injured and forgotten. So is Vilimoni Delasau, another Fijian flyer of the recent past.

Throughout Novès’ squad there are names to conjure with, names that have been overtaken by bigger names. It’s cut-throat in Toulouse. You have to run just to stand still there.

In a club that boasts so many luminaries it is hardly a surprise that nobody batted any eye-lid when Luke Burgess came to town via the Waratahs and the Wallabies. Burgess has 37 caps for Australia, the most recent coming in the third and fourth place play-off with Wales at the World Cup in New Zealand, but those kind of numbers hardly even register in a place like Toulouse. At Edinburgh, Burgess would be considered a star. At Toulouse, he has to get in line for star treatment.

He’s made a difference, though. Burgess is sharp. He might not speak the language but he’s a leader in this team. He’s managed to force his way into the side ahead of the current Argentine scrum-half and the youngster everyone thinks will be the future French No.9 and he has excelled. “It’s going OK,” he says. That’s another thing. He’s an honest bloke. Down to earth. He doesn’t pretend that things are all rosy when, in fact, they are not.

Toulouse are top of the French league, so there can’t be a whole lot wrong with them at the moment. But Burgess isn’t getting exactly euphoric about the way Edinburgh’s opponents in the Heineken Cup quarter-final have been performing of late. “It’s been up and down to be honest. We’ve played some outstanding stuff and some ordinary stuff. It’s important that we stay focused and do the simple things well and not get carried away.

“Everybody’s got confidence in their own ability but it’s not always about that, it’s about working hard. People are out to get us. We know that. We need to need work harder than everybody else.

“Our form and our results haven’t been great. We haven’t put teams away on occasion and we’ve given up games that we shouldn’t have. Everybody is just finding each other I guess. There are some new guys in the squad, like myself, and the dynamic changes when new players come in. It takes time. We lost two games in the pool stage of the Heineken Cup that we shouldn’t have lost. We got beaten by Harlequins at home and by Gloucester away in the last round and we were to blame. We were lucky to get through at all. Our qualification was in the lap of the Gods there for a while. Our fate didn’t look good, but we’ve been given this chance against Edinburgh and we can’t waste it.”

Murrayfield. It gives him the shivers. He’s only been there once and the memory of it leaves him cold. He was part of the Wallabies squad that got beaten by Andy Robinson’s side in 2009. He came off the bench for Will Genia and remembers like it was yesterday.

“I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out how we lost that game. I don’t think Australia expected Scotland to defend the way they did, to be honest. We were probably cocky going over there. I don’t know why because we were on a very bad run at the time, but we just didn’t see it coming. It was arrogance on our behalf which is unlike us because we’re not an arrogant team and we’re not an arrogant nation. It was just a slip-up. They defended well and we made a lot of mistakes. Not happy memories. I went back to Australia and got sledged by Scottish people all over the place. My great grandfather was from Whitburn so I know a lot of Scots. How many? That week, too many.”

Burgess is 28 years old and is pretty much done now with the Wallabies. He doesn’t mind admitting that it’s been frustrating for him living in the shadow of Genia, so when Toulouse got in touch he jumped at the opportunity. No regrets. His new club is a challenge, he says. Novès is a thing of wonder. Some of the places where they go and play are beautifully weird. “You go and play somewhere like Brive and you think they don’t really have a team with a lot of big names, but the passion of their supporters totally inspires them and makes them better players. It’s amazing to see it. It’s fantastic. The sense of pride in their own place is just wonderful.”

He admits he knows little or nothing about Edinburgh just yet. Doesn’t really know how they got to the quarter-finals and who they beat. The homework won’t start until today. “We’ll look at them closely. I know very little about them but I know that only good sides make it to the knockouts so they have our respect. They’ve earned a home draw, too. So they’ve done more right so far than we have. I got burned the last time I was at Murrayfield so there’s no way I’ll be listening to any talk about us being favourites. That’s what happened the last time. I’d be a fool if I didn’t learn the lesson. I’ll try and get that message across to the boys during the week. My French isn’t great, but I’ll do the best I can to warn them of the danger.”