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La Rochelle march towards Top 14 semi-finals, Bayonne relegated

By Tom Webber
Brock James has been named as Ospreys' new attack coach.

La Rochelle took another step towards the Top 14 semi-finals by defeating Bordeaux-Begles 16-5 on Saturday, while Bayonne’s relegation from the top flight was confirmed.

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Surprise leaders La Rochelle made it 10 league wins on the bounce and 11 without defeat thanks to Brock James’ kicking, the Australian kicking three second-half penalties after converting Kini Murimurivalu’s try in the opening period.

The team from the Bay of Biscay hold a comfortable 18-point advantage over third-placed Montpellier, who thumped relegation-threatened Grenoble 54-14 at Altrad Stadium.

Each of Montpellier’s eight tries came from a different scorer, with the bonus point accrued moving them to within just four points of Clermont Auvergne in the second semi-final spot.

Clermont succumbed to a shock 26-21 defeat to lowly Brive at Stade Marcel-Michelin, the visitors taking control early in the second half through Matthieu Ugalde and Benjamin Lapeyre despite being a man light from Thomas Laranjeira’s sin-binning.

Bayonne failed to show the same resilience as their stay in the top flight was brought to an end by Stade Francais at Stade Jean Dauger.

Hugo Bonneval’s try on the stroke of half-time sent Stade into the interval 10-3 up, and they never looked like surrendering a lead that ended in a 32-16 bonus-point win.

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Elsewhere, Lyon secured their first Top 14 win away from home this season by edging out Castres 17-16 at Stade Pierre Antoine.

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M
Mzilikazi 12 minutes ago
How England reverse-engineered unlikely attacking change

Thanks, Nick, not only for this fine article, but for all the others during 6N 2024. I really enjoyed this 2024 tournament, and felt it was one of the best for many years. That final match in Lyons was really good. England were certainly unlucky when that speculative hack by Ramos lead to a French try. It could just so easily have landed in English hand.s, and they score at the other end. I did think though that the French played some great rugby, and some of their driving play in the forwards was just fearsome. I watched Meafou with interest, and he has a good start to his career. It is interesting to compare him with Will Skelton. Lot of similarities, though so far Meafou has not shown any offloading threat. All credit to Borthwick for being prepared to change, and what great result, even if that last game was lost at the death. I feel they are a real chance to cause the AB’s problems this winter/summer. Finally a comment on Ireland. I thought their last game was their worst, and they did not look like the world’s No 2 side at all. What really worries me is that the loss to England was, in my view, down to poor decision making by the coaching group, and ofc Andy Farrell wears that. It was a big mistake to move JGP away from scrum half. Murray should have been the one to go to the wing. And the “finishers” should have been on the field earlier. And this is the second time this has happened. The RWC Qf against the AB’s, and not getting Crowley onto the field was a huge mistake. Finally, finally, watching Italy play was a joy. How wonderful that they are no longer the punchbag of the 6 N.

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