Bristol Bears v Bordeaux-Begles: Winners and losers as Louis Bielle-Biarrey’s ‘delicious’ exploits cement French side’s ‘favourites’ status
Bordeaux-Begles players celebrating their win over Bristol Bears with an inset of Pat Lam
Following Bordeaux-Begles’ 27-15 win over Bristol Bears at Ashton Gate, here are our key winners and losers from the gripping Investec Champions Cup clash.
Winners
Louis Bielle-Biarrey
A delicious display from the World Rugby Player of the Year nominee, who is basking in a glorious run of form right now. He yet again proved himself as a supreme finisher, nabbing a well-deserved hat-trick, but he backed that up with some typical attacking wizardry.
The France star just consistently spawned in the right areas at the right times to power his side’s counter-attacks forward even further, notably leading to his first and third try as a result, and notched a nice tally of 77 metres from his six carries.
He was also a real thorn in the Bears’ side on the kick-chase, causing heaps of issues for their back-three right across the afternoon. Simply electric from minute one to minute 80, and was rightly named Man of the Match for his efforts.
Matthieu Jalibert
Boy, is he hitting form at a brilliant time, both for his club side and possibly France as well, with Romain Ntamack reported to be a doubt for the opening two Six Nations Tests. This was by no means a vintage display from the reigning champions, but everything good about their effort bore Jalibert’s fingerprints.
He was a real all-court attacking threat, in trying conditions too, offering some genuine threat ball-in-hand alongside some deft playmaking and kicking as well. With Maxime Lucu still ruled out, he has been needed to step up a touch from a leadership point of view, and he really led from the front here.
Bordeaux-Begles
As mentioned above, this wasn’t a vintage bottle of red that you normally get from Bordeaux, but to come away with a bonus-point win in those circumstances should tell you a lot about them and further boost their status as favourites.
This win was built on their counter-attacking brilliance, with messers Jalibert and Bielle-Biarrey really coming to the fore as a result. They just seemed to pounce on any opportunity Bristol presented them, spotting the gaps in that broken field and teleporting through them to score.
Those all-important five-points now see Bordeaux finish with 20 points out of a possible 20 and a healthy points difference of +76, crucially securing home ties in the last-16 and quarter-finals should they make it through. It will take some doing to get one over them for the remainder of the tournament.
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Losers
Tom Jordan
He actually enjoyed a pretty strong start to the game; however, he came off early in the day after catching a stray boot to the face. Hopefully, it’s nothing too serious, both for Bristol and for Scotland ahead of the upcoming Six Nations.
Pat Lam
This game was right there for Bristol, but their own error count came back to haunt them come the full-time whistle, which will undoubtedly frustrate Pat Lam.
Consistent errors ball-in-hand from the Bears when they got into dangerous positions just gave Bordeaux easy reprieve after easy reprieve, and eventually the game.
Around that, too, it was just the sheer quantity of them too, with knock-ons and misplaced kicks and passes littered across their performance.
It also hit them on the scoreboard, too, with the visitors directly scoring from a Benhard Janse van Rensburg spill, Noah Heward’s pat-back eventually leading to Bordeaux’s decisive fourth try, while Ellis Genge’s collision with the post cost the Bears a try early in the second-half too.
Bristol’s entire attacking plan only works if those fundamental skills are spot on, and while the conditions certainly didn’t help them in that respect, they were just unable to connect to their absolute maximum.
We are simply not used to seeing them come up with errors like this, both in terms of where they came on the field but the sheer number of them too, so to then come up with them in a game against the reigning champions and a game that was there for the taking is a huge blow.
They should feel immense pride about a lot of their performance, pushing Bordeaux right to the limit in a competition they had breezed through thus far, but the Bears’ boss will be coming away from this with a real sense of ‘what if’, which will sting.
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