Northern Edition

Select Edition

Northern Northern
Southern Southern
Global Global
New Zealand New Zealand
France France

Head coach Cooper to leave Stade Francais

Stade Francais head coach Greg Cooper

Greg Cooper will step down as Stade Francais head coach after the Top 14 clash with Pau due to personal reasons.

ADVERTISEMENT

The former All Black only stepped up from his position as backs coach to succeed Gonzalo Quesada at the end of last season, but has now expressed his desire to leave the Paris club.

Olivier Azam and Julien Dupuy will take charge of Stade side that has endured a miserable campaign in the French top flight and is battling to qualify for the European Challenge Cup quarter-finals.

The club said in a statement: “Stade Francais Paris would like to thank Greg very much for his investment since his arrival in Paris, and even more so since the return to the club by [owner] Dr. Hans Peter Wild.

“His integrity, his human and sports qualities were appreciated by all. We wish him the best for the future, both professionally and personally.”

Cooper coached Super Rugby franchise Highlanders from 2003 to 2007 before taking the role as Blues assistant and departed his homeland to work in Japan prior to heading to France.

ADVERTISEMENT

LIVE

{{item.title}}

Trending on RugbyPass

Comments

0 Comments
Be the first to comment...

Join free and tell us what you really think!

Sign up for free
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest Features

Comments on RugbyPass

J
JW 1 hour ago
'Let's not sugarcoat it': Former All Black's urgent call to protect eligibility rules

Yep, no one knows what will happen. Thing is I think (this is me arguing a point here not a random debate with this one) they're better off trialing it now in a controlled environment than waiting to open it up in a knee jerk style reaction to a crumbling organtization and team. They can always stop it again.


The principle idea is that why would players leave just because the door is ajar?


BBBR decides to go but is not good enough to retain the jersey after doing it. NZ no longer need to do what I suggest by paying him to get back upto speed. That is solely a concept of a body that needs to do what I call pick and stick wth players. NZR can't hold onto everyone so they have to choose their BBBRs and if that player comes back from a sabbatical under par it's a priority to get him upto speed as fast as possible because half of his competition has been let go overseas because they can't hold onto them all. Changing eligibility removes that dilemma, if a BBBR isn't playing well you can be assured that someone else is (well the idea is that you can be more assured than if you only selected from domestic players).


So if someone decides they want to go overseas, they better do it with an org than is going to help improve them, otherwise theyre still basically as ineligible as if they would have been scorning a NZ Super side that would have given them the best chance to be an All Black.

147 Go to comments
LONG READ
LONG READ Does South Africa have a future in European competition? Does South Africa have a future in European competition?
Search