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Castres halt Clermont juggernaut, La Rochelle and Lyon cut gap
By Peter Thompson
Castres halted leaders Clermont Auvergne's 13-match unbeaten with a 24-16 victory, while high-flying La Rochelle and Lyon claimed Top 14 wins on Saturday.
Clermont had not suffered a defeat since October, but they came unstuck against the champions at Stade Pierre-Fabre.
Castres duo Armand Batlle and Martin Laveau scored first-half tries before Peceli Yato's five-pointer reduced the deficit to 15-8 at the interval.
Remy Grosso crossed early in the second half to make it a two-point game, but Benjamin Urdapilleta took his tally from the tee to 11 points and Rory Kockott was on target with a penalty to give Castres breathing space after Greig Laidlaw split the posts at the other end.
Defeat for Franck Azema's men was just their third of the season and Toulouse can replace them at the summit with a win over lowly Grenoble on Sunday.
La Rochelle are six points adrift of the leaders following an entertaining 27-25 win over Montpellier.
Jone Qovu's try six minutes from time brought the home side level and Ihaia West added the extras to win it, with Alexis Bales, Romain Sazy, Vincent Rattez also going over for La Rochelle.
Tries from Henry Immelman, Jacques du Plessis and Jan Serfontein were in vain for Montpellier, who are languishing in ninth spot after crashing out of the European Rugby Champions Cup.
Lyon are also out of Europe but they responded to back-to-back Champions Cup losses with a 32-11 over Racing 92, Noa Nakaitaci, Pierre-Louis Barassi and Toby Arnold touching down.
Pau beat beleaguered bottom side Perpignan 30-24, while Bordeaux-Begles are up to fifth following a 25-17 success over struggling Agen.
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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