TOULOUSE Olympique will remain full-time and continue to fund their opponents’ travel costs in 2023 if they are relegated from Super League.

Six points adrift with three matches left, Toulouse’s return to the Championship after a solitary season in the top flight will be confirmed if they lose the French Super League derby with Catalans Dragons tonight.

Even victory would not be enough to keep them up if Wakefield and Warrington take a point from their home games with Hull KR and Castleford respectively, but chief executive Cedric Garcia says Sylvain Houles’ team will battle to the end.

The club’s final home game will be shown live both in France and in England, through Sky Sports, but Garcia says the club are still expecting a season-best crowd of between 8,000 and 10,000 at Stade Ernest Wallon.

“Mathematically we’re not down,” Garcia, who reckons the fixture would have drawn 15,000 if it had been staged on a weekend, told the PA news agency.

“I know there is only one chance out of 100 or 1,000 but there is something to play for and Catalans have something to play for.

“And the team wants to go out on a high, especially at home.”

Toulouse realised a decade’s ambition when they reached Super League with victory over Featherstone in last October’s Million Pound Game but the odds were stacked against them from the start after losing two pivotal players, Mark Kheirallah and Johnathan Ford, through coronavirus-related issues.

They also lost their opening five matches but pulled off a shock win over St Helens and further raised their survival hopes with three successive victories in July which lifted them off the foot of the table before going on a five-match losing run while watching Wakefield win three of their last four games.

It has been a difficult season but Garcia says the experience has served only to whet their appetite for the big time.

“I think people recognise that we are a Super League club with our facilities and the way we operate,” Garcia said.

“We’ve tested it and we like it so we want to come back. We’re going to try everything to have a team that is capable of bringing us straight back.

“We have no option but to stay full-time if we want to be competitive as a foreign club. We tried it between 2009 and 2011 but, with the travel and recovery, it doesn’t work.”

Garcia says the club will also have no option but to continue to foot the bill for the officials and away team travel, which costs them £500,000 a year, which will not change whichever division the team operate in.

“I think on this one we won’t have any choice,” he said. “Should we stay in Super League, there would be some talks with the clubs.

“However, in the Championship I don’t see the RFL letting us not fund the travel. We need to be ready to do it.”

In readiness for 2023, Toulouse have started to re-sign some of their current players and Garcia has confirmed there will be at least five departures.

France international prop Justin Sangare is joining Leeds while Olympique will also bid farewell to former St Helens forwards Andrew Dixon and Joseph Paulo, Wales hooker Lloyd White, who looks likely to retire due to injury, and former Leeds prop Mitch Garbutt, who is joining St Gaudens as player-coach.

Garcia says the club will sit down with Australian stand-off Corey Norman next week to discuss his future after his season was ended prematurely by suspension.

Meanwhile, former Catalans stand-off Tony Gigot has been denied the chance to face his old club on Thursday night after being dropped following a disappointing performance in last week’s crushing defeat at Wigan.