Eddie Jones’ French leave, O’Gara still fly-half fishing

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The Top 14 returned for a two-weekend run between the Autumn Internationals and the scheduled start of the European competitions.

Off the pitch, things got a bit arty, as the league teamed up with artist Quibe for a player portrait or two.

 

On the pitch, promoted sides Perpignan and Biarritz showed again, in case anyone has not been paying attention, that they are not about to go quietly into the night, Clermont and Castres snatched agonising defeat from the jaws of on-the-road victory, and Racing 92 were taught a lesson in the dangers of arrogance.

The results were as follows.

 

The table looks like this after the 11th round of the French top flight.

 

Defeats for Lyon and Racing 92 meant that the top six were unable to pull away from the rest of the league – though leaders Toulouse are comfortably 15 points clear of sixth-placed Racing and have already bagged nearly 60 percent of the points that are usually enough to confirm a play-off place.

Nice-guy Eddie 

What does an international coach do in the first week after the Autumn Internationals? Eddie Jones, it turned out, went on a busman’s holiday to southwest France.

Castres Olympique head coach Pierre-Henry Broncan had invited the England manager to spend some time at the club last week. The pair had met when Broncan worked at Bath, their relationship developing rapidly as obsessive game gets obsessive game.

 

And Jones watched from the stands – flanked on either side by Castres’ president Pierre-Yves Revol and director of rugby Matthias Rolland – as Broncan’s side ran in four tries at Montpellier’s GGL Stadium, to lead by six points with six minutes left on the clock.

But two penalties gave Philippe Saint-Andre’s Montpellier one last chance to salvage the game. They made Castres pay when Julien Tisseron stretched a ball-carrying arm over the line under the posts with a minute to go. Paolo Garbisi converted to take the score to a match-winning 25-24.

Despite the late heartbreak, Broncan was the happier of the two coaches afterwards. “We lost but we played well – I appreciated the behavior of the players,” he said. “We made some small mistakes at the end of the game but it’s been a long time since we played at this level.

 

“Yes we could have won the game but there is a positive side – we scored four tries [on the road].” 

Philippe Saint-Andre, despite the four points for a win to mark veteran Fulgence Ouadrego’s record-breaking 332nd outing for the club, described the match as ‘bizarre’. But he, too, looked to the positives. “We were losing games like these when I took over in January. Now we’re winning them despite being little more than mediocre.”

 

Catalans spirit 

Perpignan came back from 21-10 down at halftime against Clermont at Stade Aime Giral to win 26-24 in a triumph of determination and never-say-die spirit.

 

Alan Brazzo’s last-minute touchdown, converted by returning France fullback Melvyn Jaminet, completed the comeback after a youthful visiting squad raced into an early lead, courtesy in part of two tries from former France under-20s winger Cheikh Tiberghien.

That demonstration of sheer will in the second-half delighted coach Patrick Arlettaz. “The last five minutes were the best in our Top 14 campaign,” he said. “That’s the mentality I like … taking our destiny in our hands and putting Clermont under pressure with possession. I saw 15 guys all going with it … they all dove in.” 

 

But underrated and unlucky-with-injuries backrow Lucas Bachelier warned against raising expectations too high after a fourth win of the season. “When we look at our first half, when we did things backwards, when we conceded easy penalties and easy points … We came back well in the second half but we cannot speak of a reference match. It was important to win, as with all these home games.” 

Clermont’s new coach Jono Gibbes, meanwhile, blamed himself for the defeat. “Our first 40 minutes were positive, but what we said in the locker room at half-time and what we did didn’t match.

 

“So it’s a question of the message. It’s not the players’ fault, it’s my responsibility. As we are repeating the same mistakes from our first 10 matches, it is because we have to coach better.” 

An injury too far for Basta?

Lyon’s Mathieu Bastareaud returned from a 10-month injury lay-off in the win over Castres in the last Top 14 round before the international break three weeks ago.

Four minutes into his second match, against former club Toulon at his old stomping ground of Stade Mayol, Bastareaud’s left knee crumbled beneath him. He was stretchered off the pitch, in tears and obvious pain, to a standing ovation, and received another one as he was – bizarrely – taken from the medical room to a waiting ambulance via pitchside.

 

“It’s more sad to have lost Mathieu than to have lost the match,” head coach Pierre Mignoni said later, as he thanked Toulon fans in the stadium for their support. “We will help him, support him with what he can have. He slipped and injured both knees.”

 

An MRI scan was scheduled for Monday – but it’s feared he suffered a quadriceps tendon rupture in both knees – the same injury in his left knee last season that kept him out for months. Mignoni, however, clamped down on early speculation this injury could end the 33-year-old’s career. “Not this way,” he snapped when one journalist posed the difficult question.

Toulon – who had earlier confirmed that Eben Etzebeth has been stood down for three months after a third concussion in 12 months, and who expect Cheslin Kolbe to be fit in time for their Challenge Cup campaign – welcomed Baptiste Serin back from injury for the first time this season in a 19-13 win that offered more than a modicum of hope for the future.

 

Serin, however, went off after 65 minutes for an HIA, and did not return.

It was far from a perfect performance against an unruly Lyon side. But there was plenty to impress new manager Franck Azema. “I’m not getting carried away, but I’m happy with the way the team behaved,” said Azema, who added that he appreciated his side’s ‘grit in the fight’…

 

“I didn’t feel any fear in us, more the desire to win than the fear of losing.” 

Fly-half fishing 

Ihaia West scored a try, landed four conversions out of five and kicked a penalty as La Rochelle comfortably beat Pau 36-8 in front of another sell-out crowd at Stade Marcel Deflandre.

The scoring was all done with half an hour to play, any hope the visitors had of a fightback ended when they conceded 14 points while wing Tumua Manu was in the bin early in the second half.

Their fly-half problems remain, however, which seems faintly ridiculous given the identity of their head coach. West is the form player of the trio who have shared the Rochelais’ 10 shirt in the 11 games this season. He’s started five games there, including the last four. Pierre Popelin played four times before picking up an injury, while Jules Plisson has just two starts at 10 this season – the last a morale-killing outing at Brive.

Both West and Plisson are out of contract at the end of the season – and there may yet be a place for them at the club next year. “They are two experienced players. My goal is to give them an opportunity to fight for their future,” O’Gara said back in September. “There is no closed door.”

 

But Antoine Hastoy’s arrival next season cannot come soon enough – for all that, ironically, he was unusually quiet on Saturday, and landed just one penalty. He could, finally, solve a long-standing issue at the club.

Quesada disquiet 

Stade Francais are a puzzle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a pink-emblazoned problem. They don’t lack talent, but last season’s play-off grabbing run looks more and more like over-performance – while their current run, along with those of recent seasons appear to be standard fare as opposed to the underperformance they were long believed to be.

 

Head coach Gonzalo Quesada is understandably concerned. The Paris side, expensively backed by billionaire Hans-Peter Wild, have slipped to 12th, just one point outside the relegation places, after their 17-14 loss at Biarritz on Saturday afternoon, and were only saved from the bottom two by a losing bonus-point.

The visitors had come back from 10-3 down at halftime to lead 14-10 with six minutes to play – only to concede a converted try, scored by Biarritz’s hooker Bastien Soury, a recent medical joker signing who played the full 80 minutes.

 

“We missed the first half,” Quesada said. “We missed two, three tackles on their only positive action which ended with a try. We lost six lineouts. The second half was better, but not good enough to win. We needed much more to win at Aguilera today.

“Obviously, we have been worried for a while. We are realistic about our objectives. We have to do much better … We will continue to work and think about changes in what we do.”

 

Time, however, may be beginning to run out for Quesada’s second stint at Stade Jean Bouin. Dr Wild’s patience cannot last forever.

Toulouse’s not-so great escape 

Toulouse maintained their winning record at home – they have picked up 28 points out of a possible 30 at Ernest Wallon this season – but their win over Brive, the first time this season Ugo Mola’s side have not managed a try, won’t go down in club annals.

“It’s been a long time since we played such an ugly game,” head coach Mola said afterwards, after Thomas Ramos, playing at 10 for once, had kicked all their points in the 18-11 victory.

Toulouse – who had rested all but lock Thibault Flament of their French international contingent – lost 11 of 22 lineouts. Despite his touch troubles, young hooker Guillaume Cramont stayed on for 76 minutes before being replaced by academy squad member Ian Boubila.

“I have some pictures to show him of Peato Mauvaka, Julien Marchand, Christopher Tolofua, and William Servat, who sent the ball more often into the arms of our opponents than our team at his age,” Mola told L’Equipe later. “Of course it’s hard, but the questioning and the work will allow him to continue to progress.”

Brive had seemed on course for their first win at Toulouse in more than a decade, but were hauled back after Enzo Herve was shown a straight red after his attempted hack ahead made contact with the head of the hosts’ young scrum-half Baptiste Germain, who had dived to gather the ball.

“I’m disgusted,” Brive’s coach Jeremy Davidson said of the result, laying some of the blame for his side’s loss at the door of referee Laurent Cordona. “There were refereeing decisions against us, especially the red card. It changed the game.

“Defensively we worked well, we resisted as long as possible. We scored a good try in the first half. The players can be proud of their performance. But it is very frustrating.”

 

Mola called for a kickable after-the-hooter penalty to be fired into touch to end the game, handing Brive what would have been a deserved losing bonus. His pitchside instruction was missed, however, and Ramos landed the penalty to send Brive home with nothing. Ramos’s was a cold rugby decision. But it was the right one…

Racing crash 

The day before Racing 92’s match against Bordeaux, the playing area at La Defense Arena was transformed from a Supercross course back into a rugby pitch.

 

There’s no reason to mention this, other than marvelling at the impressive work of the crews – it certainly does not explain the car crash that was the home side’s performance on Sunday evening.

 

What might go some way to explaining it is a disrespectful ‘come on, then” gesture from Teddy Thomas to Santiago Cordero midway through the first period, when the hosts were on top.

 

Certainly head coach Christophe Urios used it to fire up his side at halftime. “I told [the players] three things. And the first was that [Racing] were taking us for idiots,” he said afterwards.

 

Racing scored all their points in the game’s opening half-hour – and were 14-6 up at the midpoint. Bordeaux, who ended up with a try-scoring bonus, won the second-half 31-0 to finish the game 37-14 ahead.

Cordero scored three of their five tries in 14 minutes after UJ Seuteni opened the scoring two minutes before the Argentinian scored his first.

 

Next weekend – the Top 14’s last before the European competitions kick off – Bordeaux entertain Toulouse. That should be a cracker.


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