Angoulême
Montauban
B. Botica (14'), S. Zouhair (19'), A. Niusalelekitoga (27'), K. Rasaku (30', 40+6'), S. Nollet (52', 63')
Tries
B. Botica (20', 28', 40+7', 53', 64')
Conversions
This wasn’t about territory or possession. It was about what you do when you get there. Soyaux-Angoulême turned a competitive opening into a hiding because they were clinical once inside the 22 and unforgiving around two momentum spikes either side of half-time. US Montauban helped with a soft yellow, then compounded it with poor game pressure and blunt red-zone play.
The gulf was stark where it matters. Angoulême needed only a handful of clean looks to cash out tries; Montauban needed six visits for scraps. That difference — 3.2 points per entry for the hosts against 1.1 for the visitors — explains the shape of a game that felt tight for 20 minutes and looked over by 50.
The hinge was Lucas Dessaigne’s card on 12 minutes. Down a flanker, Montauban immediately lost field position and shape. Angoulême struck through Ben Botica two minutes later. Even when Simon Renda snatched a reply on 15 minutes to give Montauban a fleeting lead while short-handed, the tenor had changed: Angoulême were punching holes, the visitors were hanging on. By 19 and 27 minutes Sami Zouhair and Avakuki Niusalelekitoga had scored off direct carries and tidy support lines, the latter a momentum shifter that arrived seconds after Thomas Fortunel missed a very kickable penalty at 12–7. That miss mattered. Instead of 12–10 and a reset exit, Montauban watched the gap stretch to two scores, then three when Kaminieli Rasaku burned the edge before the half-hour. From there it was scoreboard management.
What Angoulême did well wasn’t complicated. They stressed the edges repeatedly, and their decision-makers picked the right moments to play. Botica’s control stood out: tempo when it was on, the nudge to the corners when it wasn’t, and five conversions that kept the squeeze on. Niusalelekitoga was the game’s best strike runner between the 10 and 22 channels, regularly winning the gain line to set clean rucks. Rasaku’s two finishes — one just before the break, the other on the first attack after it — were the knife. Off the bench, Enzo Nollet provided the hammer with a brace that turned a comfortable margin into a rout.
Set piece and breakdown backed it up. Angoulême’s scrum was perfect on their ball and disruptive on Montauban’s, and they simply worked through more rucks to sustain pressure. The visitors missed far too many first-up tackles to survive that kind of volume.
Match Stats
CARRIES
CLEAN BREAK
DEFENDER BEATEN
TACKLE
MISSED TACKLE
TURNOVER WON
TURNOVERS CONCEDED
PENALTY CONCEDED
YELLOW CARD
POSSESSION
SCRUMS
LINEOUTS
The second burst, straight after oranges, killed any comeback talk. Rasaku’s strike on 46 minutes flipped field position and psychology in one sweep — the classic post-kickoff killer. Montauban hadn’t even re-established their exit rhythm before Nollet arrived on 52 and 63 minutes to twist the knife. Those weren’t length-of-the-field party pieces; they came off patient multi-phase in the red zone, the exact area where Montauban couldn’t find a final pass or a latch worth a metre.
Does the margin flatter Angoulême? Not really. Fifteen clean breaks to one and a scrum split of 100% versus 50% don’t flatter; they indict. If anything, Angoulême still left points out there with a couple of clunky rucks and the odd missed connection in the first quarter. Their ruck speed was occasionally slower than Montauban’s, but it didn’t matter because they were winning collisions and finishing actions. That’s the difference between tidy phase counts and winning rugby.
Montauban did have their moments. Renda’s finish while a man down showed they can be punchy close to the line, and Dachi Papunashvili carried hard from deep to give them occasional front-foot ball. Ru-Hann Greyling and Noa Kanika worked themselves to a standstill defensively. But the core issues were self-inflicted. Dessaigne’s yellow set the tone, Fortunel’s miss at 12–7 let the rope slip, and their 22 execution was miles off the standard they hit last week. Too many lost moments at the jackal, too many soft edges. Twelve penalties and 39 missed tackles tell the same story as the scoreboard.
Individual impact shaped the pattern. Botica’s early try settled Angoulême, then his boot and control kept Montauban trapped. Niusalelekitoga’s 27-minute surge was a momentum punch. Rasaku took the game away on 30 and 46. Nollet’s finishing sealed the bonus and the embarrassment. For Montauban, the ledger is harsh: Dessaigne’s 12-minute lapse was the domino, Renda’s try the brief counter, Fortunel’s miss the sliding-doors moment.
Context matters, and it stings more because Montauban arrived above Angoulême in the early table and won the last meeting. This flips that narrative. For Angoulême, it validates their Round 1 home scoring and hints at a genuine top-six chase if they can export some of this accuracy on the road. For Montauban, after a relegation hangover and two away trips in the first three rounds, this is a hard reset: fix the discipline, sharpen the 22, and shore up the scrum before Béziers come to Sapiac. You can’t give teams this much field position and expect to live with their strike players. Angoulême didn’t blink; Montauban blinked early and kept blinking.