There are draws that feel like defeats and draws that feel like theft. This one, snatched by Ludovic Ajorque in the fifth minute of stoppage time, belonged firmly to the second category. When the striker met Hugo Magnetti's cross and steered his header into the bottom-left corner, the Stade Francis-Le Blé erupted with the relief of a crowd that had spent ninety minutes chasing a game that kept slipping away.

Brest 2, Toulouse 2 was the final reckoning, but the scoreline barely conveys the swings that produced it. Twice the hosts fell behind, twice they had to summon a response, and only at the very death did they manage to level for good. For Toulouse, arriving as one of Ligue 1's early strugglers, it was a point that will taste of something lost rather than something gained.

The visitors had led for the vast majority of the afternoon, and their supporters had begun to dream of a first win. Instead they were left to rue the concession that arrives when a defence, having held so long, cannot quite hold to the whistle. Football rarely offers grander cruelty than a goal conceded once the board has already been raised.

Russell-Rowe strikes early

Toulouse could hardly have asked for a brighter opening. Inside nine minutes they were in front, Yann Gboho threading a through ball that split the Brest lines and released Jacen Russell-Rowe in the centre of the box. The finish was emphatic, a right-footed strike curled into the top-left corner, the sort of clean, decisive stroke that settles nerves and rattles a home crowd into early doubt.

It was exactly the start a side sitting 17th needed, evidence that the goals which had eluded them might finally begin to flow. Gboho's vision and Russell-Rowe's composure combined for a moment of genuine quality, and for the opening quarter of an hour Toulouse carried themselves like a team determined to shed the tag of early-season fragility.

Yet a lead is only as good as a team's ability to protect it, and Brest, for all their stuttering start to the campaign, were not about to fold at the first setback. The response, when it came, arrived swiftly and from a familiar source of danger.

Doumbia levels

The equaliser owed everything to a set piece. From a Brest corner, Mamady Diambou supplied the assist and Kamory Doumbia was there in the centre of the box to lash a right-footed finish low into the bottom-right corner. Nine minutes it had taken Toulouse to lead; nine minutes later the advantage was gone.

It was the kind of goal that restores belief, and for a spell Brest carried the momentum, sensing that a team as brittle as their visitors might be there for the taking. The home side had drawn both of their opening fixtures, and here was the chance to turn parity into progress before their own supporters.

But if the first half belonged to trading blows, the second would test Brest's resilience more severely. Toulouse regrouped, and once more it was from a dead-ball situation that they found the initiative, exposing the very vulnerability that had brought Brest level in the first place.

Tapé restores the lead

Just past the hour, Toulouse struck again. Cristian Cásseres delivered a cross from a set piece and Christ Tapé climbed at the centre of the box to power a header into the bottom-right corner. It was a goal built on organisation and aerial conviction, and it handed the visitors a lead they might reasonably have expected to keep.

For half an hour Toulouse defended it with the desperation of a team unaccustomed to winning positions. The minutes ticked down, the fourth official's board loomed, and the away supporters began to allow themselves the belief that a first victory of the season was within touching distance.

Brest, though, kept pouring forward, hurling bodies and ambition into the box, aware that another draw would do little for a campaign still searching for its first three points. The pressure mounted, the crosses kept coming, and the clock crept beyond ninety.

Ajorque has the last word

The rescue came in the fifth minute of added time. Magnetti swung in a cross from a set piece, and Ajorque, the towering focal point of Brest's attack, met it with a header angled into the bottom-left corner. The stadium exploded; Toulouse sank. In an instant, a hard-won lead had dissolved into a shared point, and the game was gone.

For Brest, the draw lifts them to 9th on two points, unbeaten through three matches but still awaiting a first win — three draws that speak of a side capable of competing without quite closing games out. The manner of this one, salvaged from the brink, may prove the more valuable for the belief it instils. There is character in a team that refuses to accept defeat until the final whistle sounds.

Toulouse, meanwhile, remain becalmed in 17th on a single point, and this will sting far more than a routine loss. To have led twice, to have defended so stubbornly, and then to concede at the last is the sort of blow that lingers. Their attacking play carried genuine threat, with Russell-Rowe and Tapé both on the scoresheet, but points are the currency that matters, and once again they finished a match with only one to show for their efforts.

Both sides will feel they touched a win and let it drift. For Brest, the lesson is to start converting their solidity into victories; for Toulouse, it is to learn the ruthless art of seeing a game out. On this evidence, the margins between the two remain slender — but it was Ajorque's late intervention that decided which way this particular afternoon would tilt.