Nick Easter: The ‘slow strangle’ approach Leinster must adopt against Bordeaux-Begles and the battle I feel is a ‘tall order’ for Leo Cullen’s men
Leinster and Bordeaux-Begles are set to battle it out for Investec Champions Cup glory.
I keep coming back to one thought watching these two sides. Bordeaux-Begles have built a team where any of the 15 on the pitch can take any decision. Leinster have built theirs around drilling the same shapes until they are automatic. Both methods have won every knockout game on the way here. The final is the moment one of them has to give way.
The context is not the same for both. Bordeaux are the defending champions and they have the highest try-count in the competition. Louis Bielle-Biarrey is the joint top try-scorer. Leinster have not won this trophy since 2018, and they walk back into the very building they won it in. Eight years of chasing, and three lost finals in the last four.
Heads-up rugby
The whole Bordeaux game is built on one principle. The closest man to the ball does whatever the moment requires; carry, clean, or pass. Every player on the pitch is comfortable in the contact area, and you watch them long enough and you stop noticing whether the man arriving in the flat pass is a lock or an inside centre, because to them it does not matter. When you only need one body in the clean, sometimes none, you have got 14 men on their feet against a defence still reorganising, and that is why they top the try count.
Matthieu Jalibert is the player who tells you whether the buy-in is real. If he is first to a ruck he carries, and he puts his body in the collision. When your fly-half is doing that, the system works. Maxime Lucu does the same, and so does the entire back five of the pack. Nobody hides behind a job description, and that is the difference between this side and the rest of Europe.
Lucu and Jalibert are the difference at half-back, with Lucu the best nine in Europe right now. He forces you to defend the short side, which creates the space Jalibert wants for his passing game. Most clubs have one playmaker. Bordeaux have two, and they actually understand each other.
Penaud at 13
Nicolas Depoortère is out for the season, so Damian Penaud moves from his usual wing into 13. He has been there since the round of 16 and is a problem for Leinster. Penaud is bigger than most outside centres, he runs hard lines, and he reads the ball at 13 the way he reads it from the wing.
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Outside Penaud, you have Bielle-Biarrey, the most dangerous open-field runner around, and Salesi Rayasi, who runs through contact rather than round it. Romain Buros counters from his own 22, so any kick game against Bordeaux has to be smart. You cannot just kick deep and expect to set a defensive line against this back-three.
Cameron Woki is the player I most want to watch on Saturday. Racing flattened him, and Bordeaux have got the proper version of him back. He works the wide channels, he wrecks the breakdown, and the rest of the back-row plays around him.
Leinster’s strengths and the contest at nine
Leinster‘s strengths sit in the pack. James Ryan, Joe McCarthy and Caelan Doris are all serious carriers and any of them can win you the gainline on a given phase. Leinster have been without RG Snyman for a while now, and they have not replaced what he gives them. He was the difference-maker since he arrived in Dublin, the one Leinster forward who could break a defence open on his own. Without him the X-factor in the tight has gone.
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Jamison Gibson-Park is world class but Lucu is the best nine in Europe right now, and that head-to-head is the battle within the battle. The kicking duel that comes with it is its own contest. Both nines put a box-kick right on top of a chaser, and the aerial fight that follows is where Leinster have an edge. James Lowe and Hugo Keenan are both good in the air, not the very best in their positions but reliable in the contest, and the technical difference is what tilts it. Bielle-Biarrey often goes for the tap-back rather than the clean catch, the French way, which is a coin-flip on possession. Lowe and Keenan catch clean and turn defence into attack, and that is the difference between giving the ball away off a kick and going forward off one.
Doris carries more than anyone in their pack, and Dan Sheehan throws as well as any hooker going. Those players give you the spine of a winning side, but they do not give you the freedom Bordeaux have to play in any zone of the pitch.
The vulnerability is the dependency. If the breakdown produces slow ball, the system that has won three United Rugby Championships in a row simply does not function, and against this Bordeaux defence winning the gainline first is a tall order. The other issue is at 10. Leo Cullen between Harry Byrne, Sam Prendergast and Ciaran Frawley is not asking the position to control a game the way Johnny Sexton controlled a game, which means Gibson-Park runs the whole show, and if Bordeaux get to him the operation falls over.
The forward war and the verdict
This is where the Investec Champions Cup final is decided, and the Bordeaux defence is built for it. They do not sit and absorb the gainline, they attack it, they chop low, they swarm in numbers, and they make Leinster’s big men earn every yard. If Ryan, McCarthy and Doris are getting put back behind the ball, the Leinster game plan does not creak, it collapses, because there is no second gear when the carriers cannot break the line.
What slow ball against Bordeaux turns into is turnover ball, and from the time I spent coaching in South Africa, I can tell you, you do not solve that contest on the fly. Get to the ground a second late and Woki, Jefferson Poirot or Maxime Lamothe is over it with the referee watching. You concede the penalty, or you lose it outright, and Bielle-Biarrey is gone before Leinster have reset.
The set-piece is where Leinster have a route in. Ryan is the best lineout caller in the game, Sheehan’s throwing is precise, and lineouts inside the Bordeaux 22 are five points more often than not. The scrum is a genuine contest. Ben Tameifuna at tighthead is one of the best operators in the game and the Bordeaux pack has handled bigger English packs this season, and Tadhg Furlong is still very good but not the wrecking ball he used to be. Benches decide finals too, and Bordeaux’s now goes the full 80 without dropping off. The Leinster advantage of the closing 20 has gone.
Leinster have one route into this final and it is the slow strangle. Win the lineout, drive the maul, take territory, take the penalties, and grind UBB into the ground. They cannot trade scores with this Bordeaux side because the firepower mismatch in the back three is too big, so the only path is to drag the game 40 metres deeper than UBB want it played, and squeeze. Without Snyman, even that route is harder than it looked a week ago.
The problem is Bordeaux can grind too. The defence does not break, the forwards do not concede ground, and the breakdown shuts down quick ball before it leaves the ruck. Leinster’s only route runs straight into the part of the Bordeaux game that is now every bit as strong as their attack. UBB can explode and UBB can fight, and they will do both on Saturday. One turnover in Leinster’s half and Bielle-Biarrey or Penaud finishes it, two of those and the game is gone, three and it is a hammering.