Hugo Ndiaye started the sequence on Thursday night in Colomiers, sent off in the 21st minute for a shoulder to the head of Richard Hardwick. Dorian Laborde followed on Friday in Oyonnax, in the 49th. Then Raffaele Costa Storti at Sapiac, in the 57th, for dangerous contact on Baptiste Mouchous in the air. And finally Patelesio Fatuloa Tomkinson, the Agen centre, in the 66th against Brive.

Four red cards and eighteen yellow cards over eight matches. The League’s match data adds the matching figure: 202 penalties conceded over the round, or 12.6 per team.

Agen had it all

The Lot-et-Garonne club picked up five cards on its own. Four yellows, for Craig Willis (19th), Julien Lebian (39th), Valentin Gayraud (40th) and Kolinio Ramoka (60th), then Tomkinson’s red. Gayraud’s yellow, just before half-time, came with a penalty try that sent Brive into the dressing room 23-0 up.

Agen conceded nineteen penalties, Brive seven. Those were the two extremes among the sixteen teams in the round, and they were facing each other: the most penalised team was hosting the least penalised.

The rest of the data tells the same story in a different way. Agen made 169 tackles, Brive 118. The round’s two top tacklers, Santiago Socino and Hans Lombard-Buret, wear the same shirt. Agen finished with 46% of possession and 31% of territory. “We didn’t see the ball,” Mauricio Reggiardo summed up after the match.

Provence win with thirteen, Grenoble lose with thirteen

Two teams finished the evening a man or more down, with opposite outcomes.

Provence Rugby played almost an hour with fourteen after Ndiaye’s red, then the last ten minutes with thirteen after Caleb Muntz’s yellow. The Aix-en-Provence club still won 18-13 at Michel-Bendichou. Colomiers lost eleven lineouts and failed to make their numerical advantage count.

Philippe Saint-André described the real cost of that early red card: “With a red card that early, we had to bring Albert on, then take him off again for the scrum. When he was supposed to play the last 35, 40 minutes. It changed our plans quite a bit.”

Grenoble went the other way. FCG led 14-0 after fourteen minutes. They were trailing 20-14 when Costa Storti went off, finished with thirteen and only rescued a losing bonus point in the 80th minute, through an Alary penalty.

Biarritz suffered the same collapse in Oyonnax. BO were at 28-25 with a quarter of an hour left. After Laborde’s red card, they shipped points late on and let their opponents take the try bonus point (47-25).

A hundred points in Aurillac

The round produced 455 points and 54 tries. Aurillac-Dax alone supplied a quarter of them: 65-35, a hundred points, nine Aurillac tries. At the other end, Béziers left Nice without scoring a single try (43-6).

Individually, Jake Strachan scored 20 points for Aurillac, Shaun Reynolds 19 for Nevers. Dorian Marco-Pena scored the round’s only hat-trick, for Valence-Romans. Benjamin Botica made three line breaks, Lucas Martins four offloads.

Six of the eight matches went to the home side. Only Provence Rugby, in Colomiers, and Brive, in Agen, won away.

Four teams still unbeaten

Brive, Montauban, Oyonnax and Provence Rugby come out of the first two rounds with two wins. All four have won once at home and once away, which does little to separate them. Philippe Saint-André pointed out on Thursday night that his Aix club had nine points, compared with two at the same stage last season.

Narbonne provided the evening’s big story in the table: their first Pro D2 win in more than four years, snatched on the hooter against Nevers (28-26), through a try from Naël Souid, his second of the match.