TOULOUSE OLYMPIQUE are no longer a Super League team having been relegated from the top flight at the end of the 2022 season.
After a decade of preparing for the top tier, it could have been a bitter blow, but Toulouse’s chief executive Cedric Garcia is determined make it back to the big time.
“The goal of Toulouse is to come back to Super League and stay there. We know what happened last year, we know it’s tough and it won’t be easy if we come back,” Garcia told League Express.
“But we want to stay there and be a force like Catalans. Toulouse is a big city in France and can bring a lot to Super League.”
Despite struggling on the field in 2022, Garcia has pointed to the fact that Olympique had made it off the field.
“We feel that, perhaps it is pretentious of me to say, that Toulouse deserve to be in Super League,” he continued.
We have a full-time set-up and showed last year that we were a Super League club off the field. On the table it doesn’t lie so we got relegated.
“Whether we will get promoted in one or two years I don’t know, but the first goal this year is the play-offs and anything is possible in the play-offs.”
Though gaining support from most angles, Garcia does have a message for those opponents of expansion.
“I don’t really focus on opponents of expansion because we’ve seen with the poll made by IMG that a large majority are in favour of French clubs being in Super League.
“Of course you can’t always have everyone on your side but what we got in terms of support throughout last year was amazing.
“I’ve got an example, at St Helens for the last game of the season, they won the League Leaders’ Shield and we stayed there for an hour or so.
“An hour after the game ended, there were maybe 50 Saints fans waiting for us saying that they were sad that we were being relegated.
“That support is amazing and sometimes less documented than someone who is against expansion.
For now, Garcia believes that the sport has to move beyond the traditional ‘M62 corridor’.
“For the good of the game, I believe the game needs to be wider than the M62 corridor and it is what Sky Sports said and what IMG says.
“We need, on an international level, a bigger rivalry between France and England because the French Federation is working pretty much on its own.
“We would love to have this rivalry as all sports thrive with big rivalries and we need to build it up on the international level between France and England. And to achieve that we need big French clubs and a production line of players.
“Unfortunately the French Championship is not ready for that, but if you take the world strategy, you need to expand throughout England and France too.”
