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Parisse steers Stade into Champions Cup play-off final

Sergio Parisse of Stade Francais

Stade Francais will face Northampton Saints or Connacht in the European Champions Cup play-off final after coming from behind to beat Cardiff Blues 46-21 in Paris on Friday. 

Stade, who could only finish seventh in the Top 14 but won last week’s Challenge Cup final against Gloucester at Murrayfield, opened the scoring through Morne Steyn’s early penalty, but it was the Blues who led going into the half-time break.

Willis Halaholo started the move for the opening try by breaking out of defence, and from a subsequent line-out, Gareth Anscombe set up Macauley Cook to cross in the 20th minute, before Anscombe added the extras.

Just three minutes later, Stade halted Halaholo and Lloyd Williams just before the line, but could not prevent Nick Williams from barging over, followed by another Anscombe conversion.

The hosts returned fire thanks to captain Sergio Parisse, who attacked from space to create a try for Waisea Vuidravuwalu, Steyn converting the wing’s score. 

The captain, together with fellow back-rower Antoine Burban and left-wing Sekou Macalou were involved again as substitute prop Giorgi Melikidze crossed two minutes into the second half, Steyn converting to put Stade in front. 

Meyer Bosman then put in Mathieu De Giovanni and that proved the trigger for the home team to run away with it, Macalou touching down twice in the space of five minutes late in the second half.

Cook did pull one back with his second of the night, but Laurent Panis and Clement Daguin made certain of the victory with tries in the last 10 minutes, influential skipper Parisse involved in the build-up to both.

Saints hosts Connacht at Franklin’s Gardens on Saturday, with a spot in the decider against Stade next Friday up for grabs. The winner of the final will claim the last remaining spot in next season’s Champions Cup.

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J
JW 5 hours 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.

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