Top 14’s Stade sack McKenzie and Dominici

Ewen McKenzie and Christophe Dominici were on Tuesday sacked as coaches of struggling French rugby giants Stade Francais, who have won just one of their five games in the new Top14 season.

Stade owner Max Guazzini said Australian McKenzie and former France winger Dominici would be replaced by ex-Biarritz coach Jacques Delmas and Didier Faugeron, who has previous coaching experience with Brive and Agen and will oversee the backs.

The new coaching duo’s contracts with Stade, five-time French champions between 1998 and 2007, run to the season’s end.

“We noticed that the coaches’ message was no longer really getting through and we decided to change, in mutual agreement with Ewen McKenzie and Christophe Dominici,” Guazzini said.

McKenzie, a former prop who won 51 caps for Australia, arrived at Stade from the New South Wales Waratahs at the start of the 2008-09 season and will now sever all ties with the club.

Dominici, however, will remain with Stade although Guazzini offered no details on what his new post might entail.

“There’s some work to do but for us, players and staff, there’s one and the same goal: to finish in the top six.”

Faugeron added: “I made myself available (by quitting third division side Massy). When Stade Francais calls, you listen and you come.”

The Parisian club went down 30-22 to Biarritz on Sunday, just days after sinking to their heaviest home defeat in nine years when they lost 40-35 against Montauban on Wednesday.

The two defeats left Stade second from bottom of the Top 14 with just seven points garnered from five games.

Newly-promoted Albi are rooted at the bottom of the table, winless after four games.

The disastrous start to the season comes despite the Stade squad boasting an array of international players and having been boosted by the off-season signings of English duo James Haskell and Tom Palmer, France scrum-half Julien Dupuy and Scotland full-back Hugo Southwell.