JAMES HARRINGTON
FRENCH COLUMN
Stade Francais' head coach Gonzalo Quesada insisted this week that he was thoroughly aware of the state of the club he was coming to when he agreed to return to Stade Jean Bouin at the start of last season.
The Argentinian – who had guided Stade to the Top 14 title in 2015 – arrived in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic for the start of the 2020/21 campaign. The previous season had been cut short after 17 games by the health crisis, with the Parisians rooted to the foot of the table. And he navigated a Top 14 campaign that started badly, with a Covid outbreak at the club delaying their first outing, had a dip in the middle but ended with a run to the play-offs via a six-week winning streak.
Then they were well beaten in the barrage game at La Defense Arena.
“We had a more-than ‘correct' [2021-21] season,” Quesada told Le Figaro this week. “We were able to develop the infrastructure of the club, reorganise the staff, rebalance the team for the future. We are [still] in this process.”
That play-off loss to Racing was followed by three big defeats in the first three games of the season.
Stade's malfunctioning attack, porous defence and ill-discipline was rightly blamed for their earlyseason issues.
But Quesada, despite questions over Stade's recruitment and retention policy – they allowed Gael Fickou and Jonathan Danty to leave and All Black Ngani Laumape was not the instant success many had expected despite the club's desperate attempts to manage expectations – remains insistent that this squad is better than the results in the early exchanges.
“We lost three games and were not satisfied with our performance …I think we have a good squad. Is it a squad to be at the top of the Top 14 all season and to compete in the Champions Cup? We will see later.
“Today, we have a good squad, very balanced…we can do much better.”
His faith was apparently justified yesterday afternoon at Stade Jean Bouin, where he watched his side beat Castres 34-10, despite playing 77 minutes with 14 players. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a victory the Paris side needed badly.
Captain Paul Alo-Emile's thirdminute red did not help Stade's quest for a first win of the season, though Castres' Ben Botica tried to help out by conceding a penalty try and being sin-binned a few minutes later.
And Quesada will, no doubt, have a few questions about the refereeing, after Sekou Macalou was denied what looked for all the world like a score when the referee and TMO spotted a knock-on arguably no one else could see.
Not that either the red card, or the try that wasn't, mattered in the end. Stade were fearsome in defence where they had been unforgivably passive previously, and if they weren't perfect in attack, they were much more incisive.
“Ex-Leicester fly-half Zack Henry kicked 13 points for Pau”
Joris Segonds, too, looked like he'd finally got out of that deep blue funk that had plagued him since his return from Australia as a non-playing member of the France squad.
Meanwhile, Castres, one of just two sides unbeaten in the Top 14 heading into this weekend, were generously butter-fingered and illdisciplined. There's plenty of work for the club's consulting ex-referee Cedric Clave to do ahead of next Saturday's match against Toulon.
If there's a fly in Stade's ointment of match-winning relief, it's that they did not get the try-scoring bonus they deserved on top of the win they needed. What happens next – with a difficult trip to Brive, a home match against Clermont and a long awayday to Perpignan in the next three weeks of the Top 14's difficult ten-week opening block – will go a long way to defining Stade's season.
It's not only at Stade Francais where the relief is palpable. La Rochelle, the Top 14's other surprisingly winless side heading into the weekend, also broke their victory duck. And how.
Scrum-half Tawera Kerr-Barlow ran-in a first-half hat-trick in front of the club's 57th sell-out crowd in a row. And new recruit Riko Buliruarua scored two more of their nine tries, as last season's Champions Cup and Top 14 finalists beat promoted Biarritz 59-17 to belatedly kickstart their campaign.
Bordeaux's Ben Lam nearly matched Kerr-Barlow scoring feat. He touched down twice as Christophe Urios's side bounced back from the disappointment of dropping two league points at Castres last weekend to beat Brive 29-10 at home. Not that the coach was happy – he rarely is.
Former UBB player Marco Tauleigne also scored twice in his first start for new club Montpellier. Despite outscoring hosts' Pau four tries to two, the visitors headed home with only a defensive bonus point to show for their efforts after Paolo Garbisi missed a difficult after-the-hooter conversion meaning the scores finished 23-22.
Ex-Leicester fly-half Zack Henry kicked 13 points for Pau, as they came from behind to win with two converted tries in the closing ten minutes.
Racing 92, meanwhile, kicked off their match against Lyon at La Defense Arena in defence-ripping mood. They had three tries inside 14 minutes to go 21-0 up – and then they went to sleep, scoring just three more points in the following 66 minutes, while Lyon racked up 20 points of their own. They even needed a favourable refereeing decision – their on-the-line steal was highway robbery – after the hooter to make sure of the game, which ended 24-20. Last Sunday, Toulon were by far the better side in the inaugural Trophee Christophe Dominici, scoring five tries in a 38-5 win over Stade Francais. Last night's match was the polar opposite of that dominant, one-way bravura performance. A canny Perpignan gameplan successfully kept Toulon's dangermen away from the ball as they won a kicking game 12-9 to record their second victory of the season.
