News

Heymans slams scheduling

October 15 2008

Toulouse wing Cédric Heymans admits that the French side is feeling the effects of their grueling battle against Bath last weekend and has a few friendly words for the Heineken Cup schedulers ahead of Friday's clash with Glasgow.

Last year's losing finalists rounded off the opening weekend of Heineken Cup action with a hard-fought, some might say fortunate, 18-16 win over the English league leaders and Heymans says it's not a game they will forget easily.

"It was hard physically. You could see we were coming off second best in the impacts. We played on Sunday so Tuesday felt like a Monday, we're still recovering," said the French international.

Heymans is less-than-impressed with the idea of having to play two games in six days.

"It's purely a calendar problem. I don't know what the person responsible for this was doing when he decided that we would be the last to play (in Round 1) and the first play again (in Round 2)," he complained.

"Either someone is try to put a spanner in our works, or the person in charge of the calendar or the television programme needs to start thinking.

"There will come a time when we'll need to coordinate all this because it's not normal that a team that plays on a Sunday has to play the next Friday. Rugby is a contact sport, that means there are bumps and bruises and you need to give a body time to recover.

"Personally I'm feeling ok. My legs are coming back, I've got more and more gaz. I feel like I'm coming to my peak: I training started late, and had a few small personal problems, but I'm loving my rugby at the moment."

As for the opposition on Friday, Heymans expects that Glasgow, like Toulouse, will give the ball lots of air.

"We know that the Scots like to use the width of the park," he said.

"The coaches have already warned us of their ability. If you have a look at their recent performances, you see that they were able to score two or three tries at Newport. When you know what that is worth, it proves Glasgow's willingness to carry the ball."

Toulouse were unable to score a try against Bath, a rare occurrence for the French champions.

"It's great to have opportunities, but like I said at the start of the season, you need a killer instinct to capitalise," said the wing.

"We if don't do that, we know we'll be trouble, even if at the moment we're doing our basics right. We now need to be efficient. In the European Cup, it's a necessity: you need be to be efficient with the boot and your hands. If I had an explication, I'd keep it for myself. The secret is to work hard. Either way, we'll need to wake up."

Heymans is happy to play on the wing, but is ready to move to full-back if necessary, as he did last season.

"As long as I'm on the field, it doesn't really matter (where I play)," he joked.

"And that's not a disadvantage: I just don't want anyone to say that I'm good enough to cover both positions, but not good enough to start in either one..."

The dangerously unpredictable runner didn't see much of the ball against Bath, but insists that he still "takes pleasure from defending."

"Rugby is about more than (running with the ball)," he explained.

"When you're a wing, there are a lot of things to do. It's true that we spent most of our time defending but we still had a few opportunities. Again, it's regrettable not to have scored, especially me when I dropped the ball on our last opportunity. We had three opportunities to score and none of them were converted."