Following a 64-14 victory for Union Bordeaux-Bègles over Leicester Tigers in their Investec Champions Cup round of 16 clash, here’s our five takeaways from the Stade Chaban-Delmas.
The top line
Nine-try Bordeaux dismantled Leicester at a sun-drenched Stade Chaban-Delmas to cruise into a Champions Cup quarter-final against Toulouse. A sold-out crowd of 32,930 was watching on a cloudless 26°C Easter Sunday afternoon with bands playing amid a carnival atmosphere, and yet the defending champions will know they left a few scores out there.
Their accuracy in attack was not always what it should have been despite the scoreline, and that will concern the coaching staff heading into a quarter-final against opponents of Toulouse’s calibre. Where this game was won and lost came down to two things.
First, UBB’s footwork into contact is now a defining feature of this team. Player after player steps before the hit, generating front-foot ball, and it allows Maxime Lucu and Matthieu Jalibert to play at a tempo that very few sides in Europe can live with.
Secondly, Leicester’s front row. Without first-choice props Joe Heyes and Nicky Smith, the Tigers could not build the platform they needed. UBB’s early penalty through Lucu after five minutes set the tone, and once the floodgates opened after 25 minutes of doughty Leicester resistance, there was no way back.
Tigers held firm through that opening quarter, with their defence organised and disciplined, but when Bordeaux woke from their Easter lunch, the game was over in a blistering spell of five minutes that produced three tries and turned Chaban into something close to delirium.
Speed, brilliance and a homecoming
What makes this UBB side so dangerous is the sheer volume of threats across the park. Lucu was calm and brilliant throughout, his distribution and game management providing the platform for everything that followed.
Jalibert was amazing, perhaps even a touch too confident at times, over-playing where a simpler option existed, but on a day like this, the excess of ambition barely mattered. The dummy that sent the entire East Midlands shifting left before Maxime Lamothe arrived at warp speed for the fourth try was vintage Jalibert.
Then there is Cameron Woki. After poor seasons at Racing 92 that left many wondering whether France had lost one of their most dynamic forwards, Woki is back home and back to his absolute best.
His try in the 21st minute, stretching for the line after Lamothe’s peel off his own lineout throw had carried him through Adam Radwan, was the moment the game tilted. This is a player who needs to feel loved, and Stade Chaban loves him.
Add Salesi Rayasi’s hat-trick and the thunderous impact of Ben Tameifuna smashing over from 25 metres to the biggest roar of the afternoon, and you have a squad whose depth of talent is genuinely frightening. Yet despite the scoreline, UBB will privately acknowledge that their accuracy was not perfect. For the quarter-final, it will need to be.
Five minutes of chaos
The case for Louis Bielle-Biarrey as the best player in the world strengthened considerably in five minutes of chaos either side of the half-hour mark.
First, he was denied a miracle try in Leicester’s 22 when he didn’t quite ground the ball. No matter. From the resulting drop-out, he gathered, threw more dummies than Mothercare, took three defenders with him and delivered the most exquisite pop pass to Lucu, who was arriving on his right shoulder. This was a try from the gods. A Chateau Lafite among scores.
Then, from the restart, Jalibert fielded, found Damian Penaud, who moved it to Lucu, and Bielle-Biarrey then beat four players and went 50 metres. Two tries in three minutes. The best player in the world had woken Chaban-Delmas from its holiday weekend slumber.
What separates Bielle-Biarrey from every other finisher in the game is the completeness. His work rate is phenomenal; the amount of work he actively seeks out is extraordinary. His defence is ferocious, his ruck clearing relentless.
In the final minute, with the game long dead, he produced a phenomenal tackle to turn Tigers over. That told you everything. UBB even stationed him in a lineout at one point, which felt like Bordeaux simply showing off. He is only 22 years old, but plays the game as though every blade of grass on the pitch belongs to him.
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Context matters for Tigers
Context matters here. Geoff Parling made eight changes from the side that faced Gloucester a week earlier in the PREM, resting Ollie Chessum, Heyes and Smith. Regulations and the relentless Premiership schedule demanded it, and with Leicester sitting third and chasing a home semi-final, the arithmetic was clear: the Premiership is the priority.
This was not a full-strength Tigers, but it was not a development squad either. There were eight Test players and three current internationals in the 23 – and for 25 minutes they competed hard.
Archie van der Flier did an excellent job on Carlü Sadie at scrum time, and Tigers’ defensive shape held its structure well into the first quarter. When Izaia Perese gathered a loose ball and went the length for Leicester’s first try, there was no sense of surrender.
The second half told a similar story of resilience when Charlie Clare drove over to make it 43-14, and when UBB came off the boil in the third quarter, it was Tigers’ physicality that contributed to the dip.
Parling knows that his best XV would have made this a different contest. Not a winning one, most likely, but a different one.
The Chaban experience
Sebastian, the UBB press officer, said it best: “There is nothing better than the local wine, but this stadium and its rugby is its equal”. This was the ultimate rugby experience.
Bordeaux is famous for many things, but when the Champions Cup knockout rounds arrive and this ground fills and the noise cascades down from the steep stands, the wine might even be second best.
There is a cultural thing here that English rugby does not quite replicate. When Tameifuna, all 150 kilograms of him, smashed over from 25 metres, the roar was at its loudest. They value their props here as much as their world-class wings.
The walk to the ground, the noise before kick-off, the sheer communal joy of a team expressing itself in front of its people on a perfect spring afternoon in south-west France.
If Chaban-Delmas is not on your rugby bucket list, put it there. And then move it to the top.