A round-up of the weekend's action in France, with leaders Clermont slipping up unexpectedly and Stade Francais marching on.

Saturday 3rd May

Stade Francais 34-20 Bourgoin-Jallieu

Stade Francais reasserted their hold on third place with the win over mid-table Bourgoin.

Juan Martin Hernandez scored 16 points for the Parisians, while he also scored one try to add to those scored by Sergio Parisse and Mauro Bergamasco.

Bogdan Leonte and Mickael Forest got the tries for Bourgoin.

Perpignan 16 - 3 Biarritz

Biarritz's semi-final ambitions took a major knock after they lost at the Stade Aime-Giral to fall eight points behind fourth-placed Perpignan.

Nicolas Durand scored the only try of a tight match as the Catalan's maintained their 100% home record.

Dax 20-16 Montauban

Second-bottom Dax kept their slender hopes of avoiding relegation alive with their second home win.

Laurent Diaz and Bruno Hiriat scored the tries for the home side, before European hopefuls Montauban fought back in the second half with a try from Miguel Abramovic.

Albi 21 - 18 Brive

The two sides who will hope that Dax's form does not last long played out a hard-fought match that was won right at the death.

Mathieu Maillard kicked the last-minute penalty for Albi, to add to two tries from Willem Meyer, meaning that Brive had to settle for just a bonus point.

Bayonne 19-16 Montpellier

Bayonne ended their run of five matches without a win by beating Montpellier in the Basque country.

Richard Dourthe scored a telling 14 points to add to the try from Alvaro Lopez with 15 minutes remaining, after Julien Tomas scored one after just nine minutes.

Friday 2nd May

Clermont 35-28 Castres

Top 14 leaders Clermont suffered a shock 35-28 home defeat to Castres to end their 10 game winning streak.

Castres scored four tries to just one from Clermont, with Kevin Senio, Brad Fleming, Florian Faure and Lionel Mazars all going over for the visitors.

In fact the evening could have been even more huilmating Clermont had a late rally not seen them come back from 35-18 down in the closing stages with Napolioni Nalaga getting their only try 16 minutes from time.

Castres remain in sixth place which will be good enough for them to book a Heineken Cup spot, but not enough to make the semi-finals which is only open to the top four.

Toulouse 73-12 Auch

Toulouse cemented their position in second place with a crushing 73-12 victory over bottom placed Auch.

The Heineken Cup finalists ran in a total of 11 tries with Yves Donguy helping himself to a hat-trick.

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