Lopez stars for Clermont, Toulouse start post-Noves era with win

Camille Lopez kicked 19 points as Clermont enjoyed a 44-6 win over La Rochelle in their Top 14 opener Saturday while Toulouse began life after Guy Noves with a 24-7 victory against Brive.

Fly-half Lopez -- a surprise omission from the France World Cup squad -- converted all five tries, including a debut try for former England international David Strettle.

He also dropped a goal and slotted over two penalties for good measure to end La Rochelle's nine match unbeaten run in the top tier.

Lopez will have to get used to the responsibility as Clermont, last year's runners-up, are lacking their two senior scrum-halves as well as veteran Australian fly-half Brock James, who is out for at least two months with a heart problem.

Lopez slotted over the opening points after just 10 minutes.

La Rochelle had territorial superiority and created several promising scoring opportunities only to spurn them.

Indeed one of those was punished severely by the visitors as former Clermont star Kevin Gourdon lost the ball inside the Clermont 22 and a lightning quick counter-attack saw Aurelien Rougerie feed Nick Abendandon who saw Paul Jedrasiak steaming through alongside him.
He passed to the 22-year-old lock who ran over unopposed.

Lopez, 26, converted for 10-0 but Zack Holmes managed to get his radar right on the second occasion and reduced the deficit to 10-3.

However, Clermont drew further ahead when Lopez fed Abendandon and the former Bath star went over and Lopez converted for 17-3.

Holmes kicked a penalty early in the second-half to make it 17-6 but again Clermont opened up the La Rochelle defence and Strettle went over to open his try account for his new team -- Lopez converted for 24-6.

The floodgates had truly opened and the home crowd went into full booing mode as a minute later replacement Julien Bardy went over under the posts and Lopez converted to make it 31-6.

Clermont grabbed their fifth try with eight minutes remaining, Charlie Cassang darting down the blindside to set up Arthur Iturria -- Lopez converted for 44-6.

At Stade Ernest-Wallon, veteran coach Guy Noves was missing from match-day for the first time in 22 years as he prepares to take over from Philippe Saint-Andre as French national supremo after the World Cup.

Instead, Ugo Mola was in charge and Toulouse responded with a three-try performance against Brive with all of their points coming in the first half.

Wingers Arthur Bonneval and Yann David as well as No8 Imanol Harinordoquy all crossed for Toulouse.

Jake White's Montpellier overturned a 16-13 half-time deficit to beat Oyonnax 35-19, scoring five tries in the process.

Cameron Wright, Benjamin Fall, Jesse Mogg, Andrew Smith and Sitaleki Timani were all on the scoresheet.

Grenoble ran in six tries to defeat promoted Agen 38-23 with the top-flight newboys having led 13-12 at the break.

In the day's other game, Bordeaux-Begles edged Castres 19-16.
On Friday, Chris Masoe scored the winning try in Racing-Metro's 27-22 win at European champions Toulon, the club the former All Blacks backrow forward left in the summer after three years.

Masoe grabbed his side's decisive try late in the second period when they were trailing 19-17.

Both sides went into the season curtain-raiser stripped of a host of stars who are building up for next month's World Cup -- Toulon were missing 18 players and Racing 11.

"When you look at our resources before the game, we knew it would be difficult, but we cannot hide behind that," said Toulon boss Bernard Laporte.

"We need experienced players to become leaders."

Racing manager Laurent Labit, who will welcome All Blacks star fly-half Dan Carter after the World Cup, hailed his team's fighting spirit after they were twice reduced to 14 men.

"We wanted to forge a collective mindset that had been lacking last season," he explained of a side who were defeated in the quarter-finals last season.

Jonathan Pelissie scored 19 of Toulon's points including their only try while centre Henry Chavancy grabbed Racing's first try of the game.
Source: AFP