'This was totally meant to be': Stade Bordelais lock Price loving French adventure

Canadian forward Taylor Price has insisted that defending French women’s champions Stade Bordelais understand the scale of the challenge awaiting them at Toulouse in this year’s AXA Elite 1 semi-final.

“We’ve been building for this semi-final for a while,” she told RugbyPass. “I think our last game we played against Toulouse was a bit of a reference match of what we can do, and we’ve just been building from that.

“We had a stage [training camp], in Arcachon, for a bit of cohesion and preparation for the semi-final coming up. So yeah, we’re definitely all heads towards the semis.”

The Lionesses are the only side to beat Toulouse this season, thanks to a 34-29 victory at Stade Sainte-Germaine in March. Price, who plays in the second row or back-row, knows they will need to play even better at Stade Ernest Wallon on Sunday.

“We just have to be at our best,” she said. “It’s going to be tough playing in Toulouse – it’s always hard. Our forwards are going to have to really win those battles in the set piece like the scrum and the lineout and just keep possession.

“And then, I trust our backs to do what they do. Our set piece will definitely be like a key point for us.”

Whoever wins in Toulouse on Saturday will face the winner of the match between Elite 1 table-toppers ASM Romagnat and Blagnac in Biarritz on Sunday 28 June. Blagnac will have their say on Sunday, but all the indicators are that Romagnat – whose sole defeat this season was at home to Toulouse – will make the showpiece.

“First of all, we’ve got to win the semi to get to the final,” Price, refusing to consider a future beyond this weekend, said. “Four in four years is hard to do – if we can get through those two teams it’ll feel well deserved. But we’ll get there when we get there.”

The back-to-back-to-back champions kicked off their campaign with two defeats, against the two sides who finished the season ahead of them – Romagnat later completed the double, and fourth-placed Blagnac won a close affair 18-17 in early April.

Those were the only losses this season on Stade Bordelais’ card in a season in which they lost title-winning coach François Ratier to the national set-up in December.

Price, who joined last summer after helping Toulon to the Elite 2 title and promotion, said he had been key to her decision to swap the Mediterranean coast for the Atlantic. “I was definitely keen to come work with Francois just because of his history working with obviously the Canadian team – and he’s a great coach in general.

“Obviously I’m super excited for him to have the opportunity to coach France, but I was a little sad to see him go.”

But, she said, his departure has not changed much of the day-to-day at the club: “I don’t think within our systems and structure, that much has really changed. He set a pretty good foundation and for the rest of the season, we didn’t [need to] bring a new head coach in to take over.

“We have a good enough set of staff that kind of work together to fill the space that François left – it’s worked out pretty well so far – we have Fabrice [Nivard] who stepped up into that position.”

The 27-year-old is enjoying the whole Bordeaux environment: “It’s awesome working with all of the squad, like Madoussou [Fall Raclot] and Axelle [Berthoumieu] and Hallie [Taufo’ou]. I feel like I have learned so much from them and like they push the pace in every training session. It’s a great environment to become like your best self – everyone has got that same mentality of working hard.”

Price’s ambitions, however, do not rest solely in Bordeaux. Breaking into the Canadian international set-up remains a key goal – not that she is under any illusions over the scale of that challenge, either, given the strength of the World Cup finalists’ pack.

“Canada has good forwards – they’re just built different,” she joked. “I don’t know what we’ve got going on over there.

“I mean that’s obviously the goal. We don’t really have a league like France and England do, so there’s a lot of Canadians playing in France and England and instead of everyone going back to Canada, Kevin [head coach, Kevin Rouet] has been doing some overseas camps, so we’ll just all meet up in a central location.

“A couple of years ago, it was Spain; this year, it was just outside London. And there’s, maybe like 30 girls at least that come to these. It’s a great way to work together. I always feel so energised coming out of them, getting able to play with Canadians again and just have a bit of that ‘culture’ back after being in France for so long.

“I think being here [in Bordeaux] has helped me become a better player to hopefully work towards that.”

Her switch to Bordeaux came immediately after Price had helped Toulon to the Elite 2 title, and promotion to the top tier of domestic rugby in France. “I really enjoyed my time in Toulon,” she said. “When I came, it was pretty clear, ‘This is our project: to win Elite 2’.

 

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“The first year we made it to the final, and we lost. Second year, we won, and it felt like the right time – we’d finished the project, right? We won, we moved up and I needed a bigger challenge.

“I had visited Bordeaux to see some friends and I knew there were lots of Canadians here. Obviously, François has experience working with Canadians, and him being a great coach was an appeal. So it seemed like a great fit. And it has been.

“I’m fortunate to be able to work with a lot of Canadians who are already here, like Justine [Pelletier] and Fabiola [Forteza] and Karen [Paquin]. It was definitely the right choice.”

Some of the differences between upcoming Toulon and established Elite 1 side Bordeaux were obvious to Price as soon as she arrived: “It’s a more established environment and setup, here. We’re able to train in the day, which I think has been a big help. Sometimes it was tough for the girls, only training in the evening in Toulon.

“I think having been at this level for longer, [Stade Bordelais] have found systems that work for them to maintain their professionality and like obviously a lot of them working with the French team, I think there’s definitely some crossover there. Toulon will get there, but they just need a couple years to figure it out.”

Price arrived in Elite 1 just as the FFR announced a major title sponsorship deal with insurance giants AXA, around the time of the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup.

Announcing the deal at the time, FFR president Florian Grill said: “The FFR welcomes this partnership with AXA, which aims to increase women’s participation and the level of the Championship.

“Today, the budgets of Elite 1 clubs are between €400,000 and €800,000. Ultimately, with this partnership, we would like to increase them to €1.8million to €2million.”

Grill went on: “Two-thirds [of the funding generated by the partnership with AXA] will go directly to the clubs. The remaining third will be devoted to media coverage.”

Change takes time, but Price has spotted an uptick in social media activity, and a jump in the number of people coming through the turnstiles to watch matches. There’s still a long way to go to close the gap with the gold-standard PWR in England, but it’s a start.

“Even just social media-wise, I was talking to one of the creators and he said that [there’s better] access, they’re sponsoring him to basically visit all the teams and do little videos.

“The more that people know about it – the stadiums have been filling up more – I think the more we can work on getting consistent, streaming platforms for the games, and just more awareness around women’s rugby.

“It’s definitely growing [in France]. But, it’s not where the PWR is — that’s definitely what they want to shoot for.”

Price came to France after completing a Master’s degree, in which she had researched concussion in women’s rugby.

“In Canada, basically the best rugby you can really play is like in university. So I did four years at McMaster and then one year in Calgary while I was doing my master’s, but once I finished that, there’s provincial you can play, but it’s only like a couple games a year. And I just wanted to do more with rugby. So that’s when I moved over to France. Right after school.

“I caught up with an old coach in Paris because the thought of playing abroad had always appealed to me, but there was no obvious route. I didn’t have a lot of connections with coaches over here, but I knew this one person.

“So I talked to him and he was like, ‘where else are you going in France?’. And I said, ‘well, I’m going to the south’. And he was like, well, check out Toulon, Lyon, Montpellier, while you’re traveling. And, Toulon gave us a proposal – ‘this is our project, this is what we want’. It just made the most sense.

“I was actually planning to go to med school that year. And it was really do I go to med school, or do I go play in France?

“Then, at the last round of interviews, I got denied. And the same week Toulon said, ‘Here’s the contract, come play in France’. This was totally meant to be. I’m happy it worked out this way.”