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Kick-off: Racing's Francois Steyn
will play against Stade Francais
Photo: Michael Paler |
There will be no strike
action this weekend in Top 14 and ProD2 after club
presidents opted to pursue a more diplomatic way forward in
the
ongoing battle over the loss of the
DIC agreement.
Toulon’s Mourad
Boudjellal and Stade Francais’ Max Guazzini had led calls
for the playing strike after claiming their clubs could be
hit in the pocket for an extra €1m per season due to the new
legislation.
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But an extraordinary
general meeting was held on Tuesday in Paris with 27 of the
top two divisions’ 30 clubs represented, and it was decided
that talks involving the Ligue Nationale de Rugby (LNR)
would be a more productive way forward – for the time being
at least. Indeed, the presidents didn’t even take a vote on
proposed strike action.
The decision is a
victory for LNR president Pierre-Yves Revol, who had pleaded
with the clubs to adopt a more conciliatory role, but the
subject is still far from resolved. An open letter to French
president Nicolas Sarkozy has now been placed in Wednesday’s
newspapers.
If the strike had gone
ahead all this weekend’s games would have been cancelled,
with each club getting one point. Perhaps the biggest loss
of those fixtures would have been the eagerly anticipated
Paris derby between Stade Francais and Racing-Métro 92, but
that will now go ahead on Saturday as planned.
Lyon OU climbed to third in ProD2 after
hammering Tarbes 43-14 in their delayed round nine
encounter at the weekend.
The hosts ran in five
tries to secure the bonus-pointy victory, with James Bailey,
Antoine Nicoud, Nicolas Raffault, Nicolas Bontinck and
Lionel Mallier all touching down.
The hosts were actually
3-9 down after half an hour as Richard Apanui landed a trio
of early penalties for Tarbes, but Pierre-Yves Montagnat
replied in kind for Lyon for the home team to reach parity
by the 36th minute.
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Two minutes later
Tarbes were down to 14 men when hooker Mathieu Maumus was
yellow-carded, and Lyon took full advantage with English
winger Bailey going over for the game’s opening try.
Tarbes then pressed the
self-destruct button as prop Jorge Garcia was sin-binned
three minutes after the resumption, effectively reducing the
visitors temporarily to 13 men. Lyon promptly added try
number two through scrum-half Nicoud and it was all one-way
traffic after that.
The only joy for Tarbes
came from Thomas Lassere’s 71st-minute try, but
they were already 38-9 down by then, and slipped further
behind when Mallier rounded off the afternoon’s scoring with
Lyon’s fifth try two minutes from time.
Sunday’s match had
originally been scheduled for round nine but was postponed
due to several members of the Tarbes squad suffering from
the H1N1 (swine-flu) virus.
RC Narbonne has
now become the latest club to be affected by the virus with
two players suspected of contracting it this week, although
their weekend game – against Lyon – is not under threat as
yet. There were also five confirmed cases at Grenoble last
week.
Union
Bordeaux-Bègles, meanwhile, have signed Harlequins lock
Shane O’Connor, 26, as cover for the injured Cedric
Guironnet. The former Irish under-21 international could be
involved in this weekend’s match against Oyonnax.
Strugglers Colomiers
have confirmed that Ludovic Chambriard is their new backs
coach. He joins new head coach Nicolas Hallinger following
the resignation three weeks ago of Roland Pujo.
