The Count of Monte Cristo is fundamentally a story about revenge. It follows Edmond Dantès, a young sailor who is betrayed by jealous friends, falsely imprisoned for treason at Château d’if an island fortress just off the coast of Marseille visible from the Vélodrome Stadium where this weekend the 2026 Top 14 semi-finals were held.

Revenge was a theme carried into the action on the field over Friday and Saturday night. Although it is renowned as a dish best served cold, the Mediterranean temperatures made that impossible.

Despite the 9pm kick off’s temperatures in the 30s provided the meteorological backdrop for two battles to decide who would head north to the final in Paris next Saturday.

As the metro unloaded its Friday evening cargo of commuters at Gare Saint-Charles they were replaced by the colourful, jovial, and extremely vocal supporters of Toulouse and Racing 92 taking the sixteen-minute ride to the beautiful stadium that despite being the round ball home of Olympique Marseille is no stranger to rugby matches of the highest order.

Whilst the Pastis was flowing in Vieux Port Toulouse faced Racing 92 in a massively one-sided encounter.

Racing took the lead after three minutes with a penalty, their 3-0 lead created an all too brief moment of optimism for the ciel et blanc after which Toulouse rampaged through the blue and white wafer thin defence scoring five first half tries giving them a 38-3 half-time lead.

In perfect symmetry, Toulouse scored another five tries in the second half as they remorselessly demolished and disheartened their opposition, who to their credit produced two consolation tries of their own in the last ten minutes of the match. But a 71-17 scoreline says it all.

Despite the absence of Thomas Ramos, Toulouse showed their knock-out pedigree with half backs Dupont and Ntamack in top form with the latter landing 19 points from the boot.

Saturday night saw Montpellier face Stade Francais in a much closer affair than the previous evening’s match.

The capital city slickers have developed a hard edge and are a far cry from the pampered pink Parisians of old. However, despite outscoring Montpellier in the try scoring stakes their discipline let them down resulting in Miotti kicking five penalties for ‘Les Cistes’ which along with one from Coly proved to be Stade’s undoing.

This tight contest swung on a disallowed Joe Marchant try for Paris that could have gone either way, such are the small margins at this level.

So Montpellier head to Paris next Saturday for the final against hot favourites Toulouse.