Stade maintain unbeaten

Stade Francais maintained their unbeaten home record this season in impressive style with a 38-21 victory over fellow Top 14 play-off challengers Castres on Saturday. Stade, who have won seven and drawn one of their eight home games this term, ran in six tries while Castres played their part with three as the hosts also took a bonus offensive point to bounce back from their shock 39-6 humbling by Bordeaux-Begles last Saturday. Stade's Australian coach Michael Cheika was delighted with the manner in which his players had reacted to their blow-out. "Castres are a good team but it was imperative to set aside what happened last weekend," said Cheika, who came to Stade in 2010 after a successful spell at Leinster who he guided to the 2009 European Cup. "Today we were clinical in what was a good battle. Not everything was perfect, we were ill-disciplined at times and were penalised for that. "It is a good result but I know from experience that one can make many projections but the most important is how one is on the final day of the league season. "We are in a super-tight championship, and we have to remain hyper-focussed in our next few matches and avoid what happened at Bordeaux." Other matches saw champions Toulouse and the team they beat in last season's final Montpellier win, beating bottom side Lyon and Brive respectively. Toulouse's thumping 51-10 victory saw them stretch their lead over 2010 champions Clermont, who face Toulon on Sunday, to 10 points. Montpellier stayed firmly in the hunt for a top six place with a 23-9 win over Brive, who can contemplate a hard relegation battle as their winless run stretches back to October 22. In Saturday's late match struggling 2009 champions Perpignan got something of a boost in a 14-14 draw at home to Racing-Metro, though they have still only won once in their last 10 matches. Stade Francais enjoyed an explosive start, scoring 28 unanswered points in the opening 20 minutes. They ran in four tries including the first in a Stade shirt for former England and Toulon wing Paul Sackey, which like the other three were converted by Julien Dupuy. Italy captain Sergio Parisse, France lock Pascal Pape and once-capped wing Julien Arias were the other tryscorers which brought a smile of satisfaction to their former president and man responsible for the team's rise from obscurity Max Guazzini. The Arias try was the pick of them. It started from a counter-attack from deep within their own 22 with Argentinian star Felipe Contepomi playing a leading role before Arias went for the line, just getting the nod from the video referee after he had been tap-tackled by Max Evans. Stade had France hooker Dimitri Swarzweski sin-binned nine minutes from half-time after persistent infringements by him and his team-mates and Castres did not let that advantage slip. Veteran Fijian centre Seremaia Bai burst through the Stade defence to touch down under the posts for his second try of the campaign - Pierre Bernard converted to give them some hope. That was dashed within a minute of the restart as a great break by Contepomi tore apart the Castres defence and a sweet flicked pass to Pierre Rabadan saw the experienced flanker run in their fifth try. Dupuy failed for the first time with the conversion. Castres stuck to their task scoring a second try in the 50th minute as their outstanding skipper Chris Masoe found lanky winger Romain Martial and he made no mistake - Romain Teulet adding the extras. However, Stade shrugged that off and almost at will scored another try - a second one for Arias which Dupuy converted. Castres added another try right on the buzzer to complete an entertaining match.