Montpellier bag draw at Stade, Clermont cruise

Last season's surprise Top 14 finalists Montpellier produced a battling showing on Friday to bag a 19-19 draw at Stade Francais and lift themselves off the floor of the table. The draw at the Stade Charlety after they trailed 13-6 at the turnaround was credit to a patchwork side shown of skipper Fulgence Ouedraogo and fly-half Francois Trinh-Duc, both on World Cup duty with France. Jonathan Danty's try sparked a purple patch for the hosts - he bagged all his side's points - but replacement Eric Escande went over for the visitors as Montpellier fought back with four drop goals and a conversion from Raphael Lagarde. Clermont, champions in 2010, meanwhile are the only club with a 100 percent record after the third round of games - though Racing Metro have won two out of two ahead of Saturday's meeting at reigning champs Toulouse. Clermont proved too strong for new boys Bordeaux-Begles on Friday in registering a 34-6 win against a side with six players on international duty in New Zealand. The champions bagged four tries after two opening penalties from Brock James and they rubbed in their superiority as Brent Russell, Noa Seru Nakaitaci, Loic Jacquet and Kevin Senio landed tries. Clermont coach Vern Cotter said he thought the result was a fair indication of the game. "I am happy with the win and with our defence, though we didn't start off too well and didn't finish all that well either. There's good and bad and we will have to analyse that before we head off to Racing as if we start off against Racing as we did tonight we will ship 30 points." Elsewhere, 2009 title winners Perpignan edged Brive 12-9 as the latter were unable to build on last week's win over Montpellier, Castres won 23-18 at winless Biarritz to go fourth and Bayonne and Toulon fought out a 12-12 stalemate. Lyon are rock bottom after they went down to a third straight defeat at least worth a defensive bonus point - 24-18 at Agen, who climb to provisional second.