Gabin Villière is forfeited for the match of the XV of France against Italy. The Rugby Club Toulonnais winger suffered an ankle injury during Wednesday’s high-intensity training, and his name appeared on the list of players released to their clubs a few hours later.
After this injury, we heard several supporters regret that Fabien Galthié and his staff recalled the winger perhaps a little too soon after his return to the field. Indeed, Gabin Villière has experienced difficult months since the end of last season, his return to the field having been postponed several times. And again, it’s a relapse at the ankle, when Villière had just found playing time with Toulon.
Franck Azéma, moreover, admitted to Rugbyrama that he would have preferred his player to stay longer at the club instead of joining the Blues.
He played last week. I’m not going to hide from you that we would have preferred him to do one more week with Toulon. Now he felt good. It’s the selection game, that’s how it is… When you play, you can be selected. It’s always easy to say, we could have done like this, or like that. But yes, I’m not hiding it from you, we would have liked to keep Gabin a little longer in Toulon.
A clear statement on the feelings of the Var coach, who must be quite bitter seeing his international get injured again and without being in a club. The frustration must be quite significant, we imagine… The frustration for the RCT staff who will still have to do without an important element, but also and above all the frustration for the player who has to go through the stages of care and recovery. As if he hasn’t had enough lately…
It’s exhausting for him. We put ourselves in his place. Every time he comes back, he has something that bothers him. Inevitably, in these moments, you doubt. It will be necessary to help him as much as possible during this period. Afterwards, I don’t want to talk too much about it because we don’t know what he has. When we have the verdict, we can talk to each other again. We don’t know if he will miss two weeks, two months, or six months. He needs to know that. At the mental level, it’s completely different if you have two weeks or six months. In function, it will be easier for him to remobilize and stimulate himself again.
We do not yet know how long Gabin Villière is estimated to be unavailable. But whatever this duration, it will already be too long, if we count all the absences accumulated by the player already.
