A visit to Munster and Thomond Park is a grim prospect for such a brittle travelling team, writes JOHNNY WATTERSON

IN THE the scheme of things facts can be nasty, inarticulate and misleading. When damned statistics elbow into the conversation the persuasive power of numbers then becomes apparent.

In that vein Castres, after some number crunching, are verging on catastrophic. The facts and the stats, the heaped up scorelines, bar charts and Venn diagrams all point to the inescapable and ugly truth that Castres cannot play rugby away from home in the Heineken Cup. When they are removed from their home ground, Stade Pierre Antoine, the team from the south of France is one enormous Gallic shrug.

That should be of some comfort to Munster coach Tony McGahan today as the largely French band of brothers try to muster enough energy to convince fans that their euros to get into Thomond Park were worth parting with. The history of French collapses and the figures tell us that the scoreline could be unsettling.

Castres’ results over the eight years in which they have qualified for the Heineken Cup endorse the most worn-out cliché in world rugby, the one about French teams and their ability to travel or not.

There have been psychological papers written on just why that might be. But none quite explain it. Everyone knows French teams underperform when they leave their language, food and smells behind. That it is Limerick and Thomond Park this weekend promises to make the journey particularly fraught.

Prior to this season Castres had played 23 Heineken Cup matches at home and lost six. Of the 23 matches they have played away from home they have lost 19, won three and drawn one. The difference in losing six at home and losing 19 away seems pretty stark.

In the season 2000-01 Castres lost all their away Heineken Cup pool matches to Munster, Newport and Bath. In 2004-05 they lost all but one away match, which was a draw with Harlequins. Otherwise it was traditional fare, defeats to Ospreys and Munster.

In the 2005-06 season they lost all their away matches to Munster, Sale and Newport and two years later lost all their away games to Wasps, Leinster and Edinburgh.

Last year was a repeat of what went before and, away from France, Castres were beaten by Northampton, Edinburgh and Cardiff.

Castres are not alone in their bipolar nature. Bourgoin had a similar affliction. In the 2005-06 season they came to Dublin and over 11,000 fans watched in the RDS as Leinster tore them apart, winning 53-7.

The following week in the more familiar Stade Pierre Rajon, Bourgoin turned Leinster over and won the match 30-28, when Alexandre Péclier kicked a crucial penalty three minutes into injury time.

Last season in round three Biarritz rocked up to Aironi with Damien Traille, Iain Balshaw, Julien Peyrelongue, Dimitri Yachvilli, Sylvain Marconnet, Jerome Thion and Imanol Harinordoquy. Aironi had former Munster player Nick Williams.

Despite the Italian franchise not having won either a Heineken Cup or Magners League match, the previous year’s tournament finalists left Viadana after a 28-27 defeat.

While the cliche says that French club teams are difficult to beat at home but are poor travellers, it is not borne out by results for France at international level. The French, although never winners of the World Cup, have been finalists three times.

What’s more, they have twice beaten New Zealand in World Cups away from home – in Twickenham in the 1999 tournament and Cardiff in the 2007 RWC. So what gives?

“The first thing that comes to mind is the things that are different are the things that distract us,” says sports psychologist Liam Moggan. “The pitch, new dressingroom, different environment, maybe a different language . . . but there are always distractions whether you are on your own pitch or any other pitch.

“It’s a matter of how you prepare for them. If you put it in a soccer context and Inter Milan are playing AC Milan, they are playing on the same pitch but one team will lay out differently because they are supposedly away. I think they actually set themselves out physically in a different way and mentally in a different way. Then the myth will be refuelled.

“The pitch might be different but the dimensions are within the rules of the game. The rules will be precisely the same. The duration of the game and the scoring system will be precisely the same. I would think playing away from home is one of these myths that we set up and believe and act accordingly. We invent that it is that way and we refuel the belief.”

The most notorious case of on-the-road fever took place in the 1998-99 season. The mighty Toulouse hosted Ebbw Vale at Les Sept Deniers and treated the venerable Welsh club to what still is the competition’s biggest thrashing. The French club won 108-16.

Still in the tournament’s infancy, Ebbw Vale met Toulouse less than two months later and miraculously turned over the aristocrats 19-11. After the match and following a disciplinary hearing in Dublin, the French side were ordered to pay costs of £2,600 and were reprimanded for international prop Franck Tournaire’s threatening behaviour towards the touch judge Rob Dickson as well as the parts played by other Toulouse players and officials.

Reported at the time as an “explosive game at Eugene Cross Park”, violence marred the encounter, culminating with the Scottish referee Ed Murray sending off Toulouse prop Cyrille Vancheri. The first half ended with an outbreak of fisticuffs, leading to the dismissal of Vancheri for stamping, while there were more ugly scenes outside the match commissioner’s room.

A policeman’s helmet was knocked off as Toulouse players remonstrated with match officials, while police also attended an incident in the Ebbw Vale clubhouse later that evening.

This season Castres appear not to have studied too deeply their inexplicable away form. After four rounds of the Heineken Cup they have lost away to Scarlets 31-23 and were trimmed by Northampton in Franklin’s Gardens 45-0 in the last match.

Now at the foot of the pool and with no possibility of qualifying for the knockout phase of the competition, they can arrive in Limerick with the shackles off. Brio, flair and invention may also be part of the Castres package.

But history and numbers are telling us that the rugby world order will not be overturned this weekend. That is unless the remark attributed to Disraeli does not come into play. “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”