We pick at the crisp flaky leftovers from the warm croissant that is French rugby newspaper Midi Olympique. This week, could Perpignan set a date for their Nou Camp debut, Bayonne bursts at the seams and Castres reflect on their Beziers experiment

Nou horizons for USAP

USAP could finally host a match at Barcelona's giant Nou Camp. After years of promising to play a home Heineken Cup quarter-final at the 98,000-seater stadium but never actually reaching that stage, Perpignan president Paul Goze told regional newspaper l'Independent that he would be discussing the delocalisation with FC Barcelona president Sandro Rosell when he visits Perpignan next week.

"Our desire to play in Barcelona is nothing new," said Goze. "But our thinking has changed. Choosing a Top 14 match rather than a Heineken Cup quarter-final overcomes a hypothetical qualification. And we have the support of Barca.

Le Midol thinks USAP's Big Barca Bash will finally take place with the visit of Toulouse on April 1 or 2 next year, when the Spanish champions will be away at Villareal. Whether or not the match could sell out europe's largest sporting arena is another matter.

By Hook or...

James Hook won't be gracing the Nou Camp in April, although he might make a second delocalisation in 2011/12 if le Midol's insistence that last week's report on him signing a deal with Perpignan is proved right.

Both parties wasted no time in denying the story that the club had agreed terms with the Welsh international, with Goze telling l'Independent that there was no agreement with Hook "or any other player either".

"Yes, the club is working to recruit for next season, with several positions in question as well as the No. 10. But as of today, there is nothing done. Since we want quality players, chances are that we will recruit those internationals who will dispute the next World Cup. They will not be free until November 2011; we are in August 2010," the USAP president told l'Independent.

Hook, meanwhile, told the Western Mail that he was concentrating on other things: "I haven't been thinking about it because I have a lot on my mind, what with my recovery after injury and also moving house," he said.

"The Ospreys have said how much they want to keep me, and I appreciate that because I like it here.

"But let's see how it goes. At the moment I just want to focus on getting fit and back on the field."

Of course, with Top 14 clubs forbidden to sign pre-contracts until next February, discretion could just be the better part of a big fine from the DNACG. As it stands, le Midol claims that a preliminary agreement is currently being drafted.

Boules to Beziers

Castres will perhaps be disappointed not to have sold out Beziers' Stade de la Mediterranée for their first delocalisation, but their Top 14 clash with Toulouse wasn't the only first-class sporting event in the town this weekend.

"It's a relief," Castres president Jean-Philippe Swiadek told le Midol. "Everything went well from an organisational point of view, and we've added sporting success. On the morning of the game, 13,000 tickets had been sold, and 4,000 people came through the turnstiles - despite the competition posed by the petanque international.

"Would we do it again? We'll have to have a major debrief first. We could look at a number of ideas, such as combining our match with a Beziers game as a curtain-raiser. In any case, we wouldn't attempt another delocalisation without the agreement of the sporting side of the club, unless there was a big financial incentive."

From the players' point of view, beating the European champions in a big arena marked a step up from the clubs' last meeting, a play-off victory for Toulouse at their own 37,000-seater Stadium de Toulouse.

"We were surprised by the circumstances of the play-off game as most of us had never played in such a large ground," said prop Luc Ducalcon. "But beating Toulouse in this situation is an experience that can only help us to grow."

Romain two-K

Castres' returning full-back Romain Teulet is just two points short of becoming the first championnat player to reach 2000 league points. The Castres veteran, in his 10th season with the club, had a chance to pass the magic mark seven minutes from the end of the Beziers match but put his penalty attempt wide from 30 metres. Were his legs getting heavy on his return to action?

"I didn't want to attempt it really, we were at the end of the game and I was really feeling it in my legs," he told le Midol. "I only had 40 minutes of action in my legs, and didn't start training till Thursday.

"Or perhaps I subconsciously wanted to pass the 2,000 at Stade Pierre-Antoine..." He should get the chance when Bayonne visit on Saturday.

Fit to burst

It was a successful weekend all-round for Bayonne. Saved from relegation only by a technicality (OK, a €1.3m technicality, but you get our point), the sky blue Basques followed up their Week 1 win at Toulon with a 27-point whitewash of Agen.

In addition, the 17,000 that filed into Stade Jean-Dauger formed the biggest crowd of the week and easily supplied the best atmosphere, with club officials distributing 24,000 balloons and the supporters' giant flag and stirring club hymn welcoming the team back from their Mediterranean triumph.

Manager Christian Gajan's early-season achievements also seem to have given him some clout with club president Francois Salagoity. The normally outspoken patron was rumoured to have wanted to ditch outside-half Sebastien Fauqué, only for Gajan to apparently insist on ratifying the veteran's two-year pre-contract, drawn up in May.

With 33-year-old Fauqué the club's only dedicated outside-half for much of last season's run-in, Gajan is obviously making sure he doesn't struggle for back-up should new incumbent Benjamin Boyet be struck by injury or even picked for international duty.

One sour note from the Toulon victory is that Gajan will have to pop up to Paris on September 1 to explain his "behaviour" during Bayonne's win at Stade Mayol. There's no actual report on what Gajan did, but if the normally reserved 53-year-old was only leaping up and down like a lunatic, we can surely forgive him.

You can look...

Talk about rubbing it in. When Clermont visited out-of-pocket neighbours Bourgoin on Friday, not only did they steal the game and an unlikely bonus point in the last 10 minutes, they also took the French championship trophy, the Bouclier de Brennus, with them. It didn't stop many Berjaillens from posing with the giant shield, although le Midol reports that ASM president René Fontes never took his eye off the plank. As it took them 11 attempts to get their hands on it, you can understand why.

Brivelinho? Brivaldo?

Brive chief executive Simon Gillham missed much of the fall-out of the club's defeat to Racing-Metro as he spent the week between the opening matches in Brazil, "for professional reasons", according to le Midol. But before you get too excited about the prospect of the Englishman throwing some Brazilian flair into the cosmopolitan blender that is the Top 14, remember that he is also a senior executive of global media conglomerate Vivendi.

Or was he signing up some carnival girls to replace new mascot Zouzou's own dancing partners?

Put your shirt on it

Are times hard for Montpellier's stars? After their 36-19 win over Racing-Metro, the Stade-du-Manoir players asked president Jean-Pierre Massines if they could take their match jerseys home with them. Buoyed by the bonus point, he agreed. We're keeping a careful eye on eBay...

Heroes of Herault

Of course, the players could just be preparing to give up their maillots for their favourite charities. Outside-half Francois Trinh-Duc recently made a voyage to his ancestral South-East Asia on behalf of the charity Pour un Sourire d'Enfant, which offers aid to the street children of Cambodia and Laos. Now his friend, captain and fellow international Fulgence Ouedraogo has become a patron of Daba Cultura France 66, a French-based charity which supports a children's centre in the village of Tansila in the player's native Burkina Faso, and has sent a healthy cheque their way. Naturally the pair don't like to talk about their work for charity, but this week's Midol shares a photo of the centre's children holding up a message 'Merci Tonton Fufu'.

Don't touch the dial

One reason behind the victory - as well as the pace and presence of hat-trick hero Geoffrey Doumayrou - is that communications was restored between 'Pellier coaches Fabien Galthié and Eric Bechu. Not that the two weren't talking, of course, it's just that the walkie-talkie link between the pair, which broke down frequently during their first match at Biarritz, worked perfectly second time around. USAP boffins are currently working on a frequency scrambler ahead of Saturday's visit to Aimé-Giral.

About turn

And who says our weekly scan through le Midol was just about rugby? Courtesy of the above story, we've just learnt that the French word for walkie-talkie is... talkie-walkie. We're offering €1000 to the first Midol hack who refers to Serge Blanco as 'le poly-roly president de Biarritz'.

Marks-ist revisionism

Finally, we've always thought that French rugby's financial schnauzer the DNACG had too much power, but we didn't realise they had the Stalinist ability to wipe clubs from the history books. Or is there a less sinister reason behind the obvious omission of Le Rugby's former Federale 1 favourites Le Bugue from Tomas Marks' new profile?