Antoine Dupont admitted World Cup heartbreak had fired him up after he helped Toulouse run rings around Harlequins in the Champions Cup.
Rugby’s top-rated player drew a capacity crowd to south-west London for his first appearance in Britain since France failed to get past the quarter-finals of their own tournament.
They saw Toulouse rip Quins apart with a seven-try masterclass which confirmed them as favourites to add to their record five titles. The France captain then told how the painful memory of his World Cup, complete with fractured jaw which required surgery mid-tournament, had him motivated for this assault on Europe’s premier competition.
“It’s always the same thing, you lose a competition and you want to do another thing to try to win again,” said the scrum-half, fresh from being voted his country’s favourite sports star ahead of Kylian Mbappé.
“We are very motivated for this competition.”
That much was clear from the moment Quins playmaker Marcus Smith turned down a shot at the posts to go for the corner and kicked the ball dead.
Toulouse went straight upfield, centre Pita Ahki beat two defenders with footwork and Pierre-Louis Barassi cruised over for the first of his two tries.
The home side briefly drew level through an Andre Esterhuizen score, but that only seemed to irritate the visitors, who had three tries in the bag by half-time and another four after.
“Fair play to Toulouse I thought they were outstanding,” said Quins captain Alex Dombrandt.
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They made light of the loss of star fly-half Romain Ntamack, with France fullback Thomas Ramos filling in at 10 and eclipsing Smith with a 17-point display.
They also made do without the outstanding Ahki for 10 minutes after a head-on-head collision cost him a yellow card and led Quins lock Dino Lamb to be stretchered off after a lengthy delay.
“When we got down on the scoreboard we chased the game and became really loose,” Quins coach Danny Wilson admitted.
“I understand the boys’ mindset to want to score tries to get back into the game, but the risk against a team like Toulouse and the firepower they have is that the game gets looser and looser and if you’re not accurate that leads to turnover ball.
“Toulouse are one of the best teams off turnover ball and they put us to the sword. In the last 20 we kind of physically collapsed a little bit."
Quins gave themselves brief hope with two tries by Irne Herbst but a peach of a line by Matthis Lebel put the wing over before Barassi, Rodrigue Neto and Ramos took Toulouse over the hill and far away.
Even the staunchest of home fans appreciated the quality of what they had witnessed, with Dupont mobbed as he left.
The bad news for France is he will miss the Six Nations to prepare for a home Olympics with the national sevens team. The bad news for the rest of Europe is he is back for the business end of this competition.
HARLEQUINS - Tries: Esterhuizen, Herbst 2. Cons: Smith 2.
TOULOUSE - Tries: Barassi 2, Delibes, Mauvaka, Lebel, Neti, Ramos. Cons: Ramos 6.