Cards and scraps a plenty as Racing 92 beat local rivals Stade
Racing 92 set up a Champions Cup quarter-final against Sale as they came from behind to beat Stade Francais 33-22 on Sunday.
The victory gave the hosts a 55-31 aggregate win, but they had to come from behind to make sure of it, with the visitors 22-13 up at half-time to close the deficit to three after Racing’s 22-9 triumph in last week’s first leg.
Stade Francais had come out determined to undo last week’s damage, scoring early tries through Telusa Veainu and Adrien Lapegue to take a 15-3 lead, but a 35th-minute red card for Sefa Naivalu changed the equation.
Wenceslas Lauret pulled one back for Racing before Lapegue responded, but a second-half brace from Teddy Thomas, and a second for Lauret, sealed the win.
It was a red-blooded contest between the two Parsian side, with more than its fair share of off-the-ball incidents. One scrap in the 52nd minute after a challenge after the whistle saw the majority of players from either side bail into an all-in-tussle.
additional reporting PA
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If Pollock is in the squad, who gets left out?
"I think the Eddie Jones style development player approach is whats called for"
(i) Why?
(ii) The churn of players under Eddie Jones was generally considered to be quite a bad thing. Do you want Guy Pepper, Ted Hill, Ben Curry, etc. to give up and go to France like Marchant did?
(iii) England already have a really young squad, and especially a young back row. If they do badly in the six nations Borthwick will probably lose his job, so shouldn't they prioritise winning in the short term and developing the players already in the squad, rather than bringing in newer, younger, guys?
(iv) England have a development tour in June. If you really want Pollock to be in the squad prior to graduating the u20s, why not wait until the summer?
Go to commentsWhen England's defence was able to get into shape it could be dominant though (especially in the game against NZ). Is the number of tackles really the main issue?
I get that making loads of tackles is tiring, but so is building multi-phase attacks. I'm just worried England would get tired out from attacking, then struggle to get set when they're subjected to counter attacks.
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