FRANCE

Skrela out for eight weeks

Wednesday 26th March 2008

Enforced layoff: Stade Fran�ais will be without David Skrela for eight weeks

France and Stade Fran�ais fly-half David Skrela has a thigh injury and is expected to be sidelined for eight weeks.

Skrela, who has 14 caps for France, sustained the injury last Friday, the day before Stade Fran�ais's 29-0 victory of Top 14 leaders Toulouse.

29-year-old Skrela will not be able to resume training for at least another month.

The news means that Stade's two other international fly-halves, Argentinian Juan Martin Hernandez and young Frenchman Lionel Beauxis, will share the fly-half duties for the Top 14's defending champions.

Hernandez, who has has been in the news as much for his drop goal exploits as his public desire to move to Leicester, has been playing full-back for most of the season but has made no secret of his wish to get more time in his preferred position at fly-half.

23-year-old Beauxis was part of Bernard Laporte's World Cup squad but was ignored my new French coach Marc Li�vremont in the recent Six Nations, despite the new coach's desire to select youngsters as part of his plan to rebuild the national side.

Skrela, who was born and raised in Toulouse, will be moving back to his hometown to join Stade's rivals in June.

His absence in the next 2 months will go some way to reveal the Parisian side's plans for how they will cope with his absence next season.

Skrela's Stade team-mate Arnaud Marchois, who also missed the Toulouse clash due to a calf injury is expected to be fit for Saturday's match away to Bayonne.

The match will be crucial in Stade's campaign to secure a Top 14 semi-final berth. Prior to last weekend's victory they had last three games in a row allowing Biarritz, Perpignan and Castres to move within striking distance of their third place on the table.

Meanwhile, Stade's flamboyant president Max Guazzini seems to have calmed down after Toulouse's decision to send an under-strength team to the capital had his blood boiling.

After criticising the visitors from the south-west for not respecting the spectacle that should have been the biggest game of the season and suggesting that Toulouse were "jealous" of his club, his latest comments were almost apologetic, without actually going that far.

"I'm a passionate person, so sometimes what I say goes a bit further than what I really think. It's all in the past now," said Guazzini who was delighted to see his side run out easy winners in rainy conditions.

"Even the weather couldn't ruin our beautiful victory. It's one of the best games we've seen at the Stade de France," he said in typically flowery language, to match his team's uniforms, to describe a decidedly lop-sided affair.