Pro D2 Notes: Five From Five - Now the Unbeaten Three Go on the Road
After a week off, Pro D2 returns for October with some eye-catching fixtures getting us started
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We finished our last Pro D2 Notes with three questions.
Can anyone break the Oyonnax-Brive-Provence trio? Are Biarritz becoming a genuine fourth promotion contender? And which of Colomiers, Agen and Nevers can arrest an unexpectedly poor start before it becomes something considerably more serious?
After a weekend off, Pro D2 returns on Thursday night, and the fixture list could hardly have been kinder to our developing narrative, because all three unbeaten sides are on the road.
Oyonnax go to Narbonne, Brive travel to Montauban and Provence face Soyaux-Angoulême. Five rounds have given us some shape to the 2026/27 season. Now we discover how robust that shape really is.
Three teams, 15 games, 15 wins
The numbers at the top are already impressive. Oyonnax lead on 23 points, with Brive and Provence both on 21. Between them, they have played 15 matches and won every one, but they haven't necessarily arrived there in the same way.
Oyonnax have been the spectacular ones, scoring 205 points in five games, comfortably the best attack in Pro D2, with a remarkable +90 points difference.
Brive have scored 168, but the more interesting number is 106, the points they have conceded, which makes them the best defensive side in the competition. Provence sit somewhere between the two, with 160 scored, 108 conceded and an ability already demonstrated to win games in several different ways.
So perhaps Round Six isn't simply about who remains unbeaten. It is more about whether the characteristics that got each side here survive away from home.
First stop: Sapiac
Thursday night gives us the game that will probably attract most attention at TRU: Montauban v Brive.
Last time around, we concentrated on Johnny Matthews. Montauban lost 32-20 at Biarritz, but Matthews scored both of their tries, taking his tally to four across the games against Béziers and Biarritz and sending us back into the TRU archive to trace a try-scoring habit stretching all the way back to his National League days with Sedgley Park.
As mentioned in our last 'Notebook', Matthews once scored 28 tries in 29 National Two North games for Sedge. On seven occasions, he scored two or more in a game.
This week the question moves on: can Matthews and Montauban do it against one of the best sides in the division? Brive arrive with the competition's meanest defence, while Montauban return to Sapiac, where both of their league games this season have produced victories over Grenoble and Béziers.
There is a wider British and Irish interest too. Montauban's starting XV at Biarritz contained Matthews at hooker, Karl Wilkins and former Birmingham Moseley man Lewis Bean in the second row, former Exeter centre Joey Walton and ex-England scrum-half Jack Maunder.
Brive, for their part, have Ireland international John Cooney, who has started all five games and contributed 45 points, while former Bath and Leicester back Jamie Shillcock has already featured twice and scored 24 points.
That makes Thursday about more than whether Matthews scores again. Montauban are eighth with three wins and two defeats, both of those defeats coming away from Sapiac. Beat Brive and suddenly we have another question for our notebook: are Montauban themselves capable of joining the promotion conversation?
Provence face the sleeper team
If one of the unbeaten three should be particularly wary, it might be Provence. Soyaux-Angoulême are fifth, with three wins from five, a +42 points difference and, intriguingly, have an average of 53 per cent possession - second only to Biarritz.
Our previous Notes suggested they could be the sleeper story of the opening block, and Friday may tell us whether that was justified.
Provence have already won away at Colomiers and Valence-Romans, and they have shown something arguably more important for a promotion campaign: the ability to escape from matches when they haven't been at their best. Against Aurillac they trailed 17-10 before finding a way to win 24-20.
Five victories don't all have to look alike, but win at Chanzy and the conversation changes again. Provence would no longer simply be enjoying an excellent start. They would be building the sort of record expected of a side with genuine ambitions of avoiding the play-off lottery altogether.
What happens when Oyonnax don't have the ball?
Then there is Oyonnax: 205 points, five wins, three bonus points and +90. Their 56-35 demolition of Nevers before the break was another reminder of their attacking capability.
Yet one statistic caught our attention. For all those points, Oyonnax average only 48.4 per cent possession, placing them in the lower half of the competition on that measure. That doesn't suggest weakness - quite the opposite. It points to a side capable of being extraordinarily productive without needing to dominate the ball.
Narbonne, back in Pro D2 after promotion, have won two of their opening five games. Their -46 points difference shows the scale of the adjustment, but Friday night at home against the league leaders is exactly the sort of occasion newly promoted clubs relish. Oyonnax remain clear favourites, but we'll be interested in how they go about winning it.
Don't forget Biarritz
While the leading three attract the attention, Biarritz are quietly ensuring this isn't yet a three-horse race. Four victories from five have taken them to 18 points, and they have the third-best defence in Pro D2 alongside the highest average possession in the competition at 53.2 per cent.
Their only defeat came in Round Two at Oyonnax, and they have won three in a row since. This week they travel to Aurillac, and another victory might see the question from our previous Notes - Are Biarritz becoming the fourth genuine promotion contender? - begin to answer itself.
When does unlucky become a relegation battle?
At the other end, we have to revisit Nevers. After four rounds, they were perhaps the easiest winless team in rugby to defend: four defeats, four losing bonus points and a combined losing margin of only nine. Then they went to Oyonnax and conceded 56.
Nevers remain bottom on four points and this week travel to Nissa, who sit 14th on six. That may well be the most consequential game of the weekend while receiving the least attention. A Nevers victory changes the mood immediately; a sixth successive defeat would make it increasingly difficult to describe their position as merely unfortunate.
Agen are only one place and one point above them and host Dax at Armandie, while Colomiers - remarkably 13th after finishing second in last season's regular season - travel to Grenoble.
We are only five rounds into a 30-match campaign, and nobody is being relegated in October. But the points dropped now carry exactly the same value as those desperately chased in April.
One for the TRU watchlist: Noah Brown
There is another name we will keep quietly in our notebook. Noah Brown, the 19-year-old Brive second-row, stands 6ft 9in and weighs 124kg. Born in South Africa to an English father and South African mother and raised in Greater London, he is eligible for both countries.
After spells in the London Irish and Gloucester systems, opportunities in England didn't materialise. His representatives took his highlights to France, where interest reportedly came from a number of major clubs before he chose Brive.
An important qualification for now: Brown is playing for Brive's Espoirs rather than their Pro D2 first team. But he trains around senior players, and he has made an intriguing decision at the very start of his career - going to France to find the development opportunity he couldn't secure at home.
For TRU, that's worth watching. Not because we need to manufacture another "English youngster lost to France" story, but because if Brown progresses towards Brive's senior side, it raises a much more interesting question about pathways. Could Pro D2 become an alternative finishing school for young British talent? We'll come back to him.
Three journeys that could shape the next chapter
Thursday gives us Montauban against Brive. Friday sends Provence to Soyaux-Angoulême and Oyonnax to Narbonne, while Agen host Dax, Nissa face Nevers, Valence-Romans meet Béziers, Aurillac welcome Biarritz and Grenoble entertain Colomiers.
But we'll start this round where we finished the last one, with the top three. After five rounds, Oyonnax, Brive and Provence have given everybody else something to chase, and this week all three leave home.
If they wake up on Saturday morning with their unbeaten records intact, the first major conclusion of the Pro D2 season may already be staring us in the face: three clubs starting to separate themselves from the rest.
And if one - or perhaps two - stumble? Then the chasing pack closes in, Montauban or Soyaux-Angoulême potentially enter a different conversation, and Biarritz suddenly become far more significant.
That, of course, would be much more like Pro D2.
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