Champions Cup: Le Showbizz Racing 92 must rediscover je ne sais quoi
For all of the pizzazz, grandeur and elegance that comes with saying you’re a Racing 92 player, there’s little to show for it in the trophy cabinet.
In the professional era the Parisian powerhouse have won just one major trophy, a 2016 Top 14 final against Toulon, and have lost three Investec Champions Cup finals – in 2016, 2018 and 2020 against Saracens, Leinster and Exeter Chiefs.
And when you delve into the archives of pre-professionalism there’s little much more exciting than their 22-12 French title win against Agen in 1990, when the team drank champagne at half-time, wore pink bow-ties and had a back line known as Le Showbizz.
They’re still a glitzy proposition: three of Racing 92’s recent fly-halves have been Johnny Sexton, Finn Russell and – this season – Owen Farrell, and the team currently houses 23 internationally capped players.
Flop
But the reality in the 2024-25 season, under former England head coach and Leinster assistant Stuart Lancaster, is that they’re a little bit of a flop.
The blue-and-white-striped outfit are ninth in the French Top 14 having won just five of their 14 matches and were well beaten by Sale Sharks in round two of the Champions Cup.
But it is in the continental competition where they’ve also had one of their better results, a 23-12 victory over a strong Harlequins side away from Paris La Defense Arena at a substitute stadium in the French capital. It remains their only win in their last seven matches.
So the Champions Cup has offered some respite for Lancaster, and Racing 92 can build on their victory in the competition on Friday away to Glasgow Warriors and at home next weekend against the Stormers.
The Cape Town franchise sent a weakened side to Harlequins in round two and paid for it with a 53-16 defeat, and they could dispatch a similarly soft squad to Paris.
Racing towards the sack?
And with that in mind Lancaster and his team can target Glasgow this weekend knowing progress to the round of 16 could be the difference between a satisfactory season and a sackable one.
In the years since their third final appearance in 2020 – the last season before the round of 16 was introduced – Racing have only once failed to qualify for the knockout stages. They’re stalwarts but apparently unable to reach the highest echelons of the Champions Cup.
Glasgow presents an opportunity, however, because the United Rugby Championship holders started their campaign with a strong victory over Sale but couldn’t back it up with a win in France against Toulon.
Both Racing and Glasgow have one win from two and are within reach of the last 16, but the Warriors may have one eye on their domestic form.
Racing 92 need a win, and they need it soon. To continue their poor form would be to let down one of France’s great clubs.
They have recent history in reaching finals in this competition and, despite their non-existent conversion rate of final appearances to trophies, it feels like they belong in the latter stages of the Champions Cup.
They may not have the European pedigree we associate with Racing 92 but their appeal is infectious and they can be sublime in their prime.
A win on Friday in the wintry depths of Glasgow could be the biggest result of Racing’s season, and in the situation they find themselves it will not matter how they do it: with showbiz in tow or not.