It’s a question that can make or break a match: what to do with a penalty less than 10 metres from the opposition line? As in the semi-finals, Toulouse and Bordeaux should be faced with this tactical dilemma this Friday evening. In recent times, these two teams would have had only three choices in mind: aim for the posts, take the scrum, go into touch. In recent years, a fourth possibility has emerged: play by hand. Toulouse took this option last weekend. Neither a header nor a baroque attempt. It was the twenty-eighth time, this season in the Top 14, that they chose to play by hand a penalty in the opposition’s 22 metres. And it earned them a seventeenth try, scored by Blair Kinghorn. With this team, these penalties therefore become a kind of penalty.
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