This Saturday at the Stade de France (9:05 p.m.), the final between the Toulousain stadium and the Union Bordeaux-Bègles will not only be the confrontation of the two best workforce in the championship. She will also oppose two men close to their group, to the vision of similar play and to the linked course: Ugo Mola and Yannick BRU.
When the seasons are coming to an end, the meetings become heights, Toulouse and Bordeaux are now used to meeting for duels at altitude. To cornache these two behemoths of our championship, two men who have become charismatic faces of the Top 14. On the one hand Ugo Mola, the Toulouse coach, still sure of his forces and who has never experienced the defeat in the final with the Haut-Garonnais club (six contested finals, six victories). “Toulouse is a team that is used to these moments. When I arrived in this group, what impressed me was the tranquility of the guys”declares the old number 9 Toulousain, Alexi Balès. “”The guys, especially young people, play ping-pong, volleyball before a final. When I was with them, I told myself that they were completely crazy “quips the old stadium winger, Yoann Huget.
On the other hand, Yannick Bru, a disciple of Guy Novès at the Toulouse stadium at his beginnings, who went to get into Marcoussis with the Blues, on the Basque coast, in Bayonne, then on the side of the Sharks of Durban, in South Africa, before landing at UBB. A Girondin club which he brought to the highest and to which he learned to win. “He arrived with his experience and his recordexplains the former UBB hooker, Clément Maynadier. He was aggressive to have a course cross the team. It was not easy for him to launch a new story and he did it very well from the start, bringing the team to the final, even if it was a humiliating meeting. “ Tomorrow, the two technicians will again face their management and their vision of the game.
The talks, two beautiful speakers
To direct two workforce with extraordinary talents, technical knowledge is not enough. You have to know how to talk to men. This, Ugo Mola understood this. From nine seasons at the head of the Toulouse stadium, the 52 -year -old manager has managed, thanks to his words, the characters of a hungry title cloakroom. Each speech is methodical, powerful, boundary limit, having the sole purpose of fueling the thirst for victory of its champions. “”There is a share of spontaneity in my briefs, Explained Ugo Mola in an interview at the dawn of the 2024 final. I do not have this culture of war in words “. Mola erected human management in art. His speaking at the heart of the locker room have a rare ability to stimulate and federate. “The words are his strength to manager, whenever he renews his speeches, he is based on the news, with everyone’s stories. He often seeks the balance between emotion and motivation”explains Alexi Balès. The melee half also passed by Agen and La Rochelle, recalls a poignant speech at the dawn of the 2021 final: “Ugo had given the jerseys of each training club to each guy on the sheet, it was really striking”. “Recover those from Auch or Pamiers, in my case, it was rather easy. But having that of the little Australian club of Richie Arnold or that of Jérôme Kaino in New Zealand, that’s where it is strong and that we see that Ugo loves his players”, explains Huget.
Faced with him, Yannick Bru is not to be outdone. He too advocates dialogue, honesty and listening. “Yannick is a coach who takes news from you every day, Remember Maynadier. He cares about you, your loved ones. He likes to take families, he knows they are super important to us. “ Values already claimed at its beginnings, alongside Guy Novès. Since then, the watchword remains the same: to deeply love your players. “The coach bases his speeches on the emotional at the start of the week, then will dwell on tactics and strategy”details the one who has now become oyster farmer on the Arcachon basin. This strong link with his group, a recipe that allowed Bru’s UBB to weld the team and above all win a first historical title.
Two courses, only one school
On paper, the CV of the two coaches often meet. Ex-international players, former executives of the Toulouse stadium, they each took their own path. Arrived in Toulouse in 2016 to succeed Guy Novès, after sitting on the benches of Castres, Brive and Albi, Ugo Mola was in laborious beginnings with the Red and Black. Inheriting a group under reconstruction, his first season ended with a disturbing 12th place.“In 2017 it was special, Note the melee half of Béziers Samuel Marquès, present in the Stadist group at the time. These were the beginnings of Ugo and the end of a lot of players and the results did not follow. But we knew that young people like Cyril Baille, Julien Marchand, François Cros pushed behind, so we knew that it was only a bad spiral “.” Ugo knew how to be patient after this difficult season “, Add Yoann Huget. Nine years later, the record speaks for the Toulouse coach: four Brennus, two Cup champions and a team again became a machine to swallow up the trophies.
Brule, he is experiencing a more direct ascent. First coach of the Toulouse forwards during the Novès era (with three Brennus and a European Cup), he then joined the XV of France, before reappearing Bayonne successfully, winning the title of Pro D2 in 2019. After a painful descent in 2021, he bounces, goes up immediately and leaves to train in South Africa. In 2023, he returned to French terrains and propelled the UBB to a first final. “He is curious, he is not afraid to question himself and to see new things, admits Maynadier. With Yannick it is all the time stalled, precise. I really like his rigor, he is an intelligent guy who has a university logic “. Bru has transformed the Girondins. He taught them to break their glass ceiling.
The initiative and the unpredictable, common denominators
If they compete on Saturday, Mola and Brule share the same DNA: that of the game “To Toulouse”. Inherited from the 60s, this philosophy of movement, standing play, alternation and speed, theorized by Robert Bru and set to music by Villepreux, Skrela then Novès, flows in their veins. “Pierre (Villepreux), it is this rugby where autonomy and situational intelligence are so worked in training that it is almost artistic. Movement rugby was the major element of its rugby”Lola Mola.
Of “l’initiative” has “The unpredictable”each man advocates a technique where the ball must live. Where the game must breathe, regardless of the color of the jersey. “I believe in a total rugby, where players must, by their technical and physical qualities, adapt to all situations. Whatever the form of proposed rugby, it is necessary to generate emotion. All the generations which won have done so”, said the Toulouse technician in our columns at the dawn of the 2023-2024 season.
On the side of Yannick Bru, it was a whole staff that he instilled in this practice “unpredictable” You rugby. “The results are the consequence of an atmosphere that you create, said the Girondin coach a few months ago when talking about his technical palette. The game, the way we train, behavior and vision contribute to creating this atmosphere. With this staff, we have other rugby sensitivities and we want to bring a touch. We will try to ensure that the UBB has an unpredictable side “. No real style opposition, therefore, for this 2025 final. More than a duel, it is a celebration of rugby attack, transmission and common culture. Whatever the outcome on Saturday evening, the big winner may well be the game itself.
