This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with the Top 14 final, Italy's curious switch and a couple of other departures.
Loose Pass is a self-confessed admirer of French rugby, so you'll imagine the dismay felt when it transpired that the magnificent Top 14 Final was given full bells and whistles treatment from our diligent reporters.
Little was left in the Takeaways column for Loose Pass to pick over, yet fortunately Loose Pass has been holidaying in France this week and so was able to gauge a little more of the reaction on the ground.
Essentially, despite Ronan O'Gara's increasingly childish efforts to steal the limelight with his sourpus drivel, the final ended up being about two Romains: on the one side an international fly-half who had had a bit of a stinker before he nonchalantly stepped, fended and scorched down the field for the winning try, on the other a lock who has been with La Rochelle for the duration of the 'project' and who so deserved to have a Championnat to take home from it all.
Romain Sazy's end - in La Rochelle's matchday squad at least - was all but confirmed by the lengths his team-mates went to to shake his hand as he departed the field with a little over a quarter of the game to go.
After 13 years he leaves the Marcel-Deflandre field of play. Those 13 years include four in the ProD2, the agony of relegation and the ecstasy of promotion, and include the onset of President Vincent Merling's drive to 'Grow Together', which convinced hundreds of local businesses to support the club and put it on enough of a financial footing that suddenly the team included a raft of highball names such as Victor Vito.
Yet Sazy was always there. He has played 336 matches for the club, a staggering number for a lock (added also to 28 he played for Montauban, whose bankruptcy in 2010 was the opportunity for La Rochelle to sign him). He may not be the most celebrated name in the squad but he's the one who everyone in the club knows, the one who carries the culture of the club and makes sure the stars understand what it is they represent as soon as they arrive.
He now gets to do that to La Rochelle's Espoirs team, if recent reports are to be believed. Which is probably about as good a schooling in both indomitability and club culture that those youngsters will ever get. And if they ever need a reminder of the place of Romain Sazy in the heart of the town that he has done so much to help put on the map, they need just go to the La Rochelle mayor's office: there's a full-size portrait of him on the wall.
As for Romain Ntamack. What can you say? He was awful for much of the game - while O'Gara's comments were not becoming of a top-level coach with international aspirations, he was not wrong in his assertion that Toulouse did not play particularly well, and Ntamack was at the heart of much of it. His facial expression after he had sent a match-saving penalty kick beyond the corner was that of someone who had cracked. And he was saved from giving away a match-clinching penalty to the opposition because the referee had blown to stop the game for injury rather than for a penalty - there were milliseconds in that decision. But his run from his own 22 at that point was a run of someone who was on his own mission.
As was his try, which will be remembered for years. He absolutely benefitted from a moment of poor defence from UJ Seuteni, he also benefitted from La Rochelle's aggressive 14-1 defensive shape which meant that there was barely a shadow of cover once through.
But it is what he can do. And while there will be many who point out that he had a poor game and was a bit lucky, it's worth pointing out that neither Mathieu Jalibert nor Antoine Hastoy, Ntamack's supposed rivals for the France number 10 jersey, were much better. What an embarrassment of riches France has at the moment though - as mentioned in the Takeaways and as Loose Pass has mentioned here many times, the Top 14 and French rugby is, in general, streets ahead of its other European counterparts.
"We have changed the way we train in the gym and on the pitch and in the way we approach and play matches. We have changed the mentality, instilling courage and self-confidence, without constraints. With a World Cup and another four years of international matches, we will have a group averaging 50-60 caps, an exciting prospect."
Those were just some of the words Kieran Crowley stated as he prepared to leave his role as Italy coach after the upcoming World Cup. They are factual and understated, much as he has been throughout his tenure.
But make no mistake, Italy will be worse off without him. The courage and self-confidence was backed up both by a suite of skills and a steady integration of young and promising players which few, if any of his predecessors managed to any really significant level.
Italy may have ended up with the wooden spoon this Six Nations past, but you'd have bet the mortgage on them snaffling at least one win in most of the next editions. There was certainly not a performance regression against the year before. He deserved to steer the squad he has created to the next World Cup, regardless of what happens now. Italy's rugby federation has quite possibly hobbled itself horribly.
There'll be a number of retirements post World Cup, but the end of the current season means also many of those who unfortunately will not be at the global showpiece yet have contributed much to the teams they have been at and to the game at large.
Laurie Fisher's work at both the Brumbies and Munster will not be soon forgotten, nor will Nemani Nadolo's at Leicester. Nor Jaco Kriel, one of rugby's great journey stories encompassing England, Wales and New Zealand, as well as South Africa. And who can forget the contribution to the game made by Sergio Parisse?
World Cups often usher in new eras and new stars, but there are so many in the game who do so much for the clubs they represent, even if a national call-up eludes. Just ask Romain Sazy.
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