The opening round began with a demolition and ended with defeat for the four-time champions. In between, it set a points record.

A 59-point margin, unheard of on opening day

Union Bordeaux-Bègles beat Racing 92 64-5 on Saturday 5 September at Chaban-Delmas. Thirty-eight nil at the break, a fifty-nine-point margin at the final whistle.

Since the Top 14 was created in 2005, no opening round had produced such a margin. In the twenty-two previous editions, the biggest was forty-four points, when Clermont beat Agen in August 2018 (67-23). Next come La Rochelle v Clermont in 2015 (6-44) and two margins of thirty-four points.

Nor is it the first warning for the Paris region side. Last January, again at Chaban, UBB won 62-20. Two matches, one hundred and twenty-six points scored.

Toulouse lose again at Marcel-Deflandre

The champions closed the round on Sunday 6 September with a 30-27 defeat in La Rochelle. Ugo Mola had set out his stall before the match: “I expect us to be a bit better than what we’ve done for five years, which is get hammered every time we go there.”

The pattern holds. Since their win on this ground on 5 September 2021, Toulouse have lost there five times in a row in the league: 7-30, 8-29, 19-22, 10-38, and now 27-30. Only one of those five defeats, in January 2025, earned them a losing bonus point.

The way it played out, though, was unusual. La Rochelle opened the scoring with a Charles Kante-Samba try in the 14th minute, before Toulouse ran in three tries in twelve minutes, through Tommaso Menoncello on his debut for the club, Emmanuel Meafou and then Romain Ntamack, all converted by Thomas Ramos. A fourteen-point lead at the break, 24-10.

La Rochelle clawed their way back with a Nolann Le Garrec try in the 52nd minute, then an Antoine Hastoy penalty in the 55th. Hastoy then levelled at 27-27 in the 65th, scoring and converting himself. Georges-Henri Colombe had been sin-binned two minutes earlier.

That was when the match swung the wrong way for Toulouse: Tolu Latu was sent off in the 71st minute, and Hastoy kicked the winning penalty in the final minute, against fourteen men.

The change of kicker was significant. Nolann Le Garrec, who had been taking the kicks until then, felt discomfort in his knee after a tackle and left the last two penalties to his fly-half. He finished the match and is awaiting scans.

It is also Toulouse’s fourth defeat in nine opening rounds since 2018. One pattern stands out: in those nine seasons, Stade Toulousain have always started away from home.

The highest-scoring opening round in nine years

The seven matches produced 404 points, an average of 57.7 per match. That is the highest total of the last nine opening rounds, ahead of the 371 points of 2018-2019. Last season opened with 330 points, and 2023-2024 with 293.

Six of the seven home sides won. The only exception was Montpellier.

Montpellier, for the third time running

At the Septeo Stadium, last season’s finalists lost 19-27 to Pau, trailing 7-17 at half-time, after playing with thirteen men for several minutes early in the match.

Joan Caudullo had raised the subject before the game. MHR had lost their first home match in each of the previous two seasons: against LOU in 2024 (22-26), against Toulon in 2025 (17-27). That makes three. The last time they won their first home game was against La Rochelle in August 2023.

Twenty unanswered points for USAP

Saturday’s simultaneous kick-offs delivered four tight matches and one try-fest.

At Jean-Bouin, Stade Français led 28-6 at half-time and ended up winning 28-26. Perpignan scored twenty second-half points without the Parisians adding a single one. “We played back to front, we lost the plot,” admitted back-rower Ryan Chapuis.

At Jean-Dauger, Bayonne beat Toulon 27-26. One point, and a match that started in the worst possible way for the Basque side: their scrum-half Léo Coly, who arrived from Montpellier this summer, went off injured after two minutes and forty-five seconds. Toulon leave with a losing bonus point.

At the Matmut Stadium, Lyon and Clermont traded blow for blow, 40-36, seventy-six points in all, the highest-scoring match of the evening after Bordeaux’s. Clermont’s two eighteen-year-olds, Louis Vermeulen and Yanis Brosset, made their first starts there.

Castres beat Vannes 29-20, after leading 17-6 at the break.