Jeremy Davidson and Castres out to kick-start season with win over old Munster enemy
PARTING: Jeremy Davidson, the Castres Olympique head coach
It’s strangely fitting that the 30th year of the Champions Cup includes the 19th match between Munster and Castres, the tournament’s most-played fixture.
Munster have the upper hand overall, boasting a perfect record at home, but the two sides’ record on French soil, where this year’s match takes place on Friday, is pretty even – Munster have five wins to Castres’ four, with one draw.
The last time the most well-met of Champions Cup frenemies faced one another, in Castres in January 2022, Gavin Coombes scored the match-winning try in the 78th minute of a messily enthralling encounter.
Much has changed at the French side since. Then-manager Pierre-Henry Broncan, who guided Castres to the Top 14 final that season, was sacked in February 2023. Defence coach Joe Worsley followed at the end of the 2022/23 campaign. Attack coach David Darricarrere left a season later.
All three are now at ProD2 side Brive which, coincidently, is the former club of current Castres boss Jeremy Davidson. The former Ulster, Castres and Ireland second row joined Castres a week after Broncan left, having been shown the door at Amedee Domenech the previous October.
Steven Setephano arrived as defence coach in summer 2023, and Xavier Sadourny took charge of the attack this season.
The coaching sands are shifting again. Davidson’s future had been subject to some speculation for a while, but the club confirmed last month that his contract will not be renewed at the end of the current campaign. Sadourny will become head coach.
It’s harsh on Davidson, who has done little wrong at a club with domestic – if not European – ambitions greater than their budget, who have a habit of overachieving compared to significantly better-resourced rivals.
But never-relegated Castres expect Top 14 play-offs. Seven losses in 11 closing-straight games last season cost them the top six by a single point. And they’re solidly mid-table this time around, frustratingly unable to win away from home.
Unfortunately for Davidson, blood, sweat and effort – and some canny signings – don’t cut it, for all that he’s transformed a trick lineout and a trick scrum into set pieces that resemble a threat.
Sadourny, meanwhile, building kinetic structure into Darricarrere’s attacking platform, has developed the Top 14’s third most dangerous attack, behind Bordeaux and Toulouse. President Pierre-Yves Revol has decided his promise over Davidson’s solidity is worth the gamble.
But the news led to obvious questions about who is in charge: the once or future coach. For the club, Davidson officially remains the go-to boss. Unofficially, however, it’s hard not to draw parallels with the France squad in the lead-up to the Rugby World Cup in 2019, when Fabien Galthie joined Jacques Brunel’s staff as an ‘assistant’.
As an unnamed Top 14 coach told Rugbyrama at the time: “Players aren’t stupid. They know Galthie will be [France] coach... They will drive for him.” As it was with France, so it possibly is at Castres.
But they have more pressing issues, right now, than who exactly is in charge – in day-to-day terms it probably means very little, anyway.
They head into Friday’s match on the back of defeats at Clermont in the Top 14 and at Northampton in the first round of the Champions Cup. A fair to middling season could very quickly turn sour at just the wrong time. After Munster, Castres face Bordeaux at home and Bayonne away in a tricky run before the turn of the year.
A win on Friday probably isn’t a long-term priority for Castres – with good reasons. They cannot compete with the likes of Toulouse, Leinster, Saracens, Bordeaux or Munster on multiple fronts. But they can compete on the domestic one, which has the side-effect of qualifying them for the other.
But, right now, a strong performance against the oul’ enemy, and the odds, definitely is their interests as the look to boost morale as they career towards Christmas.
What was a manageable injury list – second row Tom Staniforth and winger Christian Ambadiang are out for some time, while fly-half Pierre Popelin’s stop-start season was in another down period – suddenly exploded over the past couple of weeks.
Backrows Baptiste Delaporte and Baptiste Cope were hurt in the Top 14 win over La Rochelle. They will be out for months rather than weeks.
They then lost Gauthier Maravat, Paul Jedrasiak, Florent Vanverberghe, Geoffrey Palis and Will Collier in the loss at Clermont.
All 10 were, unsurprisingly, absent for the trip to a Darragh-swept cinch stadium. A couple may return for this Friday’s match at Stade Pierre Fabre, as Castres seek to stop a dip before it becomes a slump.
