What is your assessment at the end of the first six days with a 4th place and 11 points?
Points aren’t really what I look at, especially in a championship with only 10 teams. I watch the content of our matches more. We have a group with a lot of new players, so it took us a while to get to know each other because we haven’t had many friendly matches. It was necessary to find automatisms and above all, individual and collective confidence in interactions and systems. On the outside, we lacked a lot of character. In Fréjus, they play well, we not so much, we lose 3-0. At Saint-Quentin, it was a catastrophic match on our part. We lost (3-0) against a team less strong than us. It shook us up a lot and since then, we have trained much better, and we played much better in Royan. For now, that’s the only thing I’m focusing on. I can’t wait to see our confrontation against the leader, Ajaccio, in two weeks, which will be a real test even if it is time for France Avenir to take the 3 points and compete in the Coupe de France against Sète four days later.
You won your first away success last weekend in Royan. Can we speak of relief?
Relief, no. I’m happy that the team had a good match. In addition, we were able to get everyone playing following small physical glitches. It’s just a satisfaction, a nice victory but there is no overinterpretation to be made in one direction or another.
What is this team missing today to have more consistency?
If we give him more time with the automatisms that we will find, the injured who are returning and the collective confidence which will be reestablished, we will have all the weapons to go and shake up anyone, even Ajaccio whose team is a little more complete than ours.
This Saturday, you face the young people from France Avenir who have always won. Could this be a trap match?
Yes, it’s never a match we like to play. Me anyway. But we have to be able to deconstruct that. We have to say to ourselves that it’s a match like any other against an opponent less strong than us. You have to know how to win this kind of match if you want to win the championship. They are an athletic team with a lot of talent and potential but they lack experience. Me, I’m less athletic but I have more bottle. We must make these young people feel it. We have to accept that they do things very well and that we do things less well. I experienced every scenario against this team. Sometimes we had a big match where we largely dominated them and sometimes we had to fight until the end to win. Lots of things can happen. It’s a special encounter. We must focus on ourselves and not on the opponent. In this championship, it is the most important and it will allow us to go far.
The match
Saint-Jean-d’Illac (4th/11 pts) – France Avenir (10th/1 pt), this Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Pierre-Favre hall in Saint-Jean-d’Illac.
