Stade Francais marked their return to the refurbished Jean Bouin stadium with a crushing 38-3 victory over Biarritz on Friday, as they provisionally moved to the summit of the fledgling Top 14 table.
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After three years of playing their home fixtures across the city at the Charlety stadium, tries from Pierre Rabadan, Julien Arias, Jonathan Danty and Waisea Vuidravuwalu propelled Stade to a commanding win in their home opener.
Stade coach Gonzalo Quesada commented: “It’s excellent to have won this first match (at Jean Bouin stadium), it enables the players to fix in their heads that Jean-Bouin is a positive ground, where they can experience pleasure. We need to mark our territory.”
A pair of penalties from Stade scrum-half Julien Dupuy staked the hosts into an early 6-0 lead before Biarritz fly-half Julien Peyrelongue reduced the arrears with a penalty of his own.
Stade duo Antoine Burban and Pascal Pape both then saw tries ruled out upon video review before long-serving back-row forward Rabadan powered over on 22 minutes, this time his effort upheld following replays as Dupuy converted to extend the home side’s advantage.
A drop-goal from Jules Plisson before the interval moved Stade 16-3 ahead before they turned on the style in the second half as Biarritz were reduced to 13 men in a matter of minutes with Daniel Waenga and Arnaud Heguy both sin-binned.
Replacement scrum-half Jerome Fillol knocked over a penalty with Arias then touching down as the hosts capitalised on their two-man advantage before the introduction of of debutant South African fly-half Morne Steyn on 61 minutes further galvanised the home side
A converted Danty try moments after the Springbok’s arrival was soon followed by a try from Fijian winger Vuidravuwalu, with Steyn again connecting on the conversion to cap off a resounding success that sent the capital club three points clear of Toulon ahead of Saturday’s action.
Sorry folks for this lazy and cheesy one. Penned the headline yesterday before the game already, couldn’t help it with the alliterations opportunity it presented
Have only watched a little bit of the game and even that was interrupted with picture breaking up so any analysis on Steyn’s play may be a little sketchy – but from what I saw it was weird seeing the man in the black Stade jumper for the first time, although he would have not felt too odd with the various pink trimmings on the jumper following the last two seasons Super rugby at the Bulls. Not sure how he is getting on communication wise as there were periods were he seemed to be running back and forth across the park to various sides of the rucks and mauls and tended to not get too involved in tackling for a spell, on a few occasions merely sticky out arm towards attackers, but it was not critical as they were either in the process of being wrapped up by his team mates or got stopped soon after. Right towards the end though it was a bit nervy to see Steyn get stuck in a bit and go into ruck and maul, particularly at one point when he was at the forefront of a maul and a Biaritz player came barging into his back. Saw his conversion of the last try which wasn’t too tricky from about 5 or 10 metres left of the left upright – as usual Steyn slotted it right through the middle. There were also some good clearance kicks one in particular went from not too far from his goal line to about the halfway line. Until the last few minutes when Steyn got stuck in at the mauls I had the impression that they were maybe trying to shield him a little bit (maybe with next week at the Boks in mind) as there was one move when Stade were deep in their 22 and instead of passing the ball to Steyn someone else tried to clear it, eventually after a few phases the ball made its way back to Steyn who was quite far back, I think he may have even been in the goal area, he calmly booted the ball upfield. I missed a lot of the game so not sure about much of the running and passing but from what I saw it looked as if Steyn wasn’t been used much as first receiver, eg. the last try was scored by the lock (I think) receiving the ball in space and going on a really strong run back through the forwards to crash over.
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