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TOP 14 ROUNDUP - Champions Clermont humbled at La Rochelle
By Matthew Scott
La Rochelle ran in six first-half tries as they subjected Clermont Auvergne to a 51-20 demolition in Top 14, while Montpellier kept up their winning start to the campaign.
Gabriel Lacroix helped himself to a hat-trick as the champions were ruthlessly put to the sword – La Rochelle gaining a measure of revenge for missing out on the title, despite leading Clermont by seven points in last season's table.
Clermont prop Raphael Chaume and wing Remy Grosso were sin-binned in a miserable first period for Clermont, the latter yellow carded for deliberately knocking on a pass which looked set for a try, resulting in a penalty score.
Trailing 43-6 at the break, Clermont's woes continued when Lacroix completed his hat-trick after Camille Lopez fumbled the kick-off.
Tries from Fritz Lee and Peter Betham did little to salve the champions' wounds.
La Rochelle still trail Montpellier by five points at this early stage of the campaign, Vern Cotter maintaining a fine start to life in France with a 22-17 win at Castres.
Ruan Pienaar kept Montepllier in the contest, booting 17 of their points, including a penalty and the conversion of Nemani Nadolo's try as the visitors produced a late burst to snatch the points.
Racing 92 ran in 15 unanswered second-half points to register a second win of the season by seeing off bottom club Brive 25-6, with Bordeaux two points adrift after beating Stade Francais 30-10 on home turf.
Oyonnax grabbed their first win of the campaign in a low-scoring affair against Agen, coming out on top 12-10.
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Go to commentsHi all. Thanks for commenting. JD is right: the headline is not mine. My headline was what ended up as the first sentence: “Why is Super Rugby Pacific so exciting this season?”. I am certainly not claiming that teams from one competition are better than the teams from another. This type of discussion is entirely subjective (as the teams do not play each other, and even with the players face each other in their national teams, it is in different systems, conditions, etc.). The season being exciting has nothing to do how well the Wallabies will do against the Lions, or against New Zealand.
My sole purpose here was to try explore quantitatively a ‘qualitative’ impression (that the season is exciting).
On Graham’s point about extreme results skewing the results, and Ed’s comment on removing outliers, this is precisely why I report the median values as well as the averages. The median is not skewed by outliers. If the margins of 5 games are 3, 4, 5, 8 and 10 points, the median margin is 5. If there was one blowout and the margins were 3, 4, 5, 8 and 57 points, the median margin is still 5.
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