Toulouse in Durban playing the Sharks is the game of the weekend for South African rugby fans. It is as close as one can get to a Springboks versus France international in the guise of a club showdown.
Toulouse, six times winners of the Investec Champions Cup and the defending champions up against the current EPCR Challenge Cup champions. Whoever wins has the bragging rights as rugby’s Super Cup club winner.
Toulouse have never played in South Africa since the South Africans joined the Champions Cup three seasons ago. They’ve hosted SA teams, among them the Sharks and duly thumped them at home.
France’s most celebrated club and the one that gave rugby life to South Africa’s favourite winger Cheslin Kolbe, have been irrepressible in the early rounds of this season’s Champions Cup. They thrashed Ulster 61-22 at home and then travelled to Exeter and were even more convincing in winning 64-21.
Toulouse are rightly considered the best club team in the world, with a playing squad boasting some of the best players on the planet.
France’s captain and Toulouse talisman Antoine Dupont is the most talked about rugby player globally but this will be his first visit to South Africa for his club side and his first to South Africa since playing 24 minutes as a second-half replacement in France’s 37-15 defeat against the Springboks in 2017.
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Dupont, regarded by many as the best player in the world and by some as the greatest to ever play the game, is 28 years old but remarkably the 24 minutes against the Boks in 2017 are the only minutes in his professional career that he has played in the southern hemisphere.
Dupont, for all his title-winning exploits with Toulouse and France, has never played in Australia, New Zealand or Argentina. He has played just four Tests outside of Europe, which were at the 2019 World Cup in France, with Wales edging France 20-19 in the quarter-finals.
Dupont aside, Toulouse’s 2024/25 squad includes the biggest names in French Test rugby in prop Cyril Baille, hooker Peato Mauvaka, loose-forward Anthony Jelonch, flyhalf Romain Ntamak, fullback Thomas Romas and several other French internationals.
The Toulouse foreign legion includes Australian lock Richie Arnold, former All Blacks and now Samoan prop Neop Laulala, Argentinean lock Efrain Elisas, England’s back rower Jack Willis, the Argentine backline duo of Santiago Chocobares and utility back Juan Cruz Mallia, as well as Scotland’s utility back Blair Kinghorn, who can play flyhalf, centre, wing and fullback.
Emmanuel Meafou, with more than 100 matches for Toulouse at lock, was born in Auckland, New Zealand to Samoan parents, moved to Australia as a youngster, made his professional rugby debut in Australia, found a home in Toulouse and in 2024 played the first of his four Tests for France.
Toulouse, so strong with local French talent, have added hugely with foreign player acquisitions. Only Ireland’s Leinster can match them for quality in squad depth and squad numbers.
The Sharks will get back Bok World Cup winners Eben Etzebeth and Bongi Mbonambi for what is expected to be a thrilling occasion, but the absence of injured Springbok fullback Aphelele Fassi and centre Andre Esterhuizen has changed the potency of the hosts’ attack.
Bok prop Ox Nche this week spoke of the physicality of the contest and the similarities in the rugby DNA of South Africa and France.
There is massive respect for the achievements of Toulouse from within the Sharks squad but there is also the challenge of knocking over the world’s best club team and the most successful ever in the Champions Cup.
If there is not a game to miss, then it is this one in Durban on Saturday. It could be a world club final.
Photo: BackpagePix
