For forty-four minutes, Le Mans looked like a side ready to shed the tag of nearly men. Two goals to the good, playing on the counter with pace and conviction, they had Lens on the ropes and a home crowd daring to dream of a first win of the campaign. Then the game turned, as games so often do, on the cruellest of hinges — an injury-time header — and by the hour mark the lead had evaporated entirely.

The 2-2 draw leaves both clubs with plenty to chew over. For Le Mans, a fourth draw in four league outings and the nagging sense of two points spilled; for Lens, a point rescued from a position that, at half-time, looked close to hopeless. It was a match of two distinct halves, the first belonging emphatically to the hosts, the second to the visitors who refused to accept the script written for them.

The Stade Marie-Marvingt had rarely seen its team play with such front-foot menace. Le Mans attacked in transition, ruthless on the break, and for a spell Lens simply could not live with them. That the game finished level says everything about how quickly momentum can drain from an afternoon that promised so much.

Bourabaa lights the fuse

The breakthrough arrived on 32 minutes and it bore all the hallmarks of a side coached to hurt teams in the spaces behind. A fast break carved Lens open and Adil Bourabaa was there at the finish, rising to head home from very close range into the bottom-left corner. It was a striker's goal in every sense — the timing, the composure, the instinct to be exactly where the ball would drop.

If the first goal was about presence, the second was about vision. Just before the interval Bourabaa turned provider, again on the counter, releasing Lucas Calodat to arrow a left-footed shot from the left side of the box beyond the reach of the goalkeeper and into the bottom-right corner. Two goals, two fast breaks, and a home side operating on a different frequency to their visitors.

At 2-0 with the half almost done, Le Mans had the game precisely where they wanted it. The pattern had been set: soak up what little Lens offered, then strike with speed and precision on the turnover. It was a masterclass in counter-attacking football, and it deserved to be worth more than the single point it ultimately yielded.

The turning of the tide

Football, though, rarely rewards the deserving alone. In the second minute of first-half stoppage time, Abdallah Sima climbed at the centre of the box to glance a header into the top-left corner. The goal was checked and confirmed by VAR, and the review only sharpened the sting for Le Mans — a lifeline handed to Lens at the very moment the hosts should have been sauntering off to the safety of the dressing room two goals clear.

That goal changed everything. Instead of regrouping with a cushion intact, Le Mans returned for the second half with the momentum bleeding away and Lens sensing blood. It took the visitors just six minutes after the restart to complete the recovery. Ruben Aguilar swung in a cross and Franjo Ivanovic met it with a header into the high centre of the goal, the ball beyond the reach of a stranded defence.

From 2-0 down and seemingly beaten to 2-2 in the space of eleven playing minutes across the interval, Lens had authored a comeback built on the oldest and simplest of weapons — the header from a delivery into the box. Twice they attacked the ball with more hunger than their hosts could muster, and twice they were rewarded.

What the point means

For Le Mans, the draw nudges them to three points and 13th, a record now reading no wins, three draws and a solitary defeat. There is a case to be made that their football has been better than that return suggests, and this performance offered genuine encouragement in the way they created and took their chances. But there is a harder truth too: a side that leads by two goals must learn to see the job through, and the manner of these dropped points will haunt them.

Lens climb to ninth on four points, their season a jagged shape of one win, one draw and two defeats. This felt like a point earned through character rather than command, a reminder that a group capable of conceding twice on the break can also summon the resolve to claw its way back. The 8 goals they have scored hint at attacking teeth; the 7 conceded underline the fragility that Le Mans exposed so vividly in the first half.

Both sides remain clustered in the congested middle of the early Ligue 1 table, where a single result can lift or sink a mood. Neither will feel this was a wasted afternoon, but neither will feel entirely satisfied either — the hosts because they let a win slip, the visitors because they were second best for so long before rescuing themselves.

The road ahead

The challenge for Le Mans is now one of conversion — turning promising performances and hard-won leads into the victories that transform a season's opening weeks. Four draws is not a crisis, but it is a habit, and habits in football have a way of hardening if left unchecked. The raw materials are there in Bourabaa and Calodat; what is missing is the killer instinct to close matches out.

Lens, meanwhile, can take heart from the second-half response even as they interrogate a first half that nearly buried them. Sima and Ivanovic delivered when it mattered, and Aguilar's delivery proved the difference-maker in the recovery. Correct the defensive lapses that gifted the hosts their two-goal cushion, and there is a competitive side lurking here.

For now the two clubs part with a point apiece and a shared sense of unfinished business. Le Mans will rue what got away; Lens will cherish what they salvaged. And the Stade Marie-Marvingt, which had roared its team towards a famous win, was left to reflect on how swiftly the tide can turn on a Sunday afternoon.