Super League: Sylvain Houles celebrates ‘historic’ Toulouse Olympic triumph over St Helens | Rugby League News

Toulouse claimed their first win since earning promotion to the Betfred Super League by overcoming reigning champions St Helens at Stade Ernest Wallon; The 22-20 loss was Saints’ first of the 2022 season

Sylvain Houles was emotional after Toulouse’s win over St Helens

An emotional Sylvain Houles hailed a historic night for Toulouse Olympique as they claimed their first Betfred Super League win with a stunning comeback against champions St Helens.

Converted tries from Matty Russell and former Saints player Dominique Peyroux put the hosts into a 12-8 lead at Stade Ernest Wallon, although the unbeaten leaders hit back to lead 20-12 midway through the second half.

But Chris Hankinson’s converted try and an unconverted score from Paul Marcon in the closing stages snatched a memorable 22-20 triumph which head coach Houles felt had been brewing for the side which won promotion from the Betfred Championship last year.

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Highlights of the Betfred Super League match between Toulouse Olympique and St Helens.

“St Helens are the best in rugby league in Europe, but the boys have been working so hard for weeks and you could feel it coming,” Houles said. “We could sense a belief and we know exactly what is needed in this competition and they pulled it out of the bag today.

“It’s historic, it’s our first win in Super League and it is ironic that it was St Helens. It could only be Toulouse! It is up to us now; it is in our hands to stay in Super League.”

Two tries from Tommy Makinson and one apiece from Josh Simm, Jack Welsby and Dan Norman, plus two conversions from Lewis Dodd, accounted for St Helens’ tally as their five-game unbeaten run came to an end.

Saints’ first loss of 2021 came in France as well when they were beaten by Catalans Dragons and head coach Kristian Woolf want to find out the reasons for their travel woes.

“It’s true our first losses of both seasons have been in France and we need to find out the reasons why,” Woolf said. “But let’s not take any credit from Toulouse, they were excellent tonight and there are going to be lots of teams who come here and lose this season.

“It’s a difficult place to come to and their supporters really get behind them. We’ll have to learn some lessons from this quickly. It wasn’t something we saw coming, we trained quite well in the week running up to this.

“Full credit to Toulouse, there were a couple of times where we got on top and we looked like we had an opportunity to run away with it but they found a real energy to stop us and they found some good tries as well.

“They deserve all the credit, it’s a great win for them and their club but we’ve got to look at what happened tonight and learn from it.”