What lessons have Bordeaux-Begles learned? 

Union Bordeaux-Bègles' Damian Penaud. Pic: Billy Stickland/Inpho

Munster will find out this afternoon exactly how much Top 14 opponents Bordeaux have learned from their exit from last season’s Champions Cup at the same stage.

This quarter-final is one of two fixed points in seasonal rugby space and time for the French side.

The Top 14 final is the other one Bordeaux are working towards, but that’s not until the end of June. One fixed point at a time. Looking too far ahead, as players and coaches understand all too well, risks being dragged into a faltering singularity.

“We promised ourselves we would get back to where we failed last year,” scrum-half Maxime Lucu told journalists after last Sunday’s round-of-16 win. “We’re there. Now we have to go one more round.” 

There are plenty of similarities between Bordeaux’s run to the last eight this year, and the same stage last year. A strong group phase – they finished top of their pool both years; then a relatively comfortable run through the round of 16, beating Saracens 45-12 in early April 2024, and Ulster 43-31 last Sunday.

That win over Saracens last year set up a home quarter-final against Harlequins. 

Stade Chaban Delmas – as it will be this weekend – was full. The sun shone bright and hot, as it is expected to again this weekend, though storms are possible later in the afternoon. Everything seemed set fair for a second semi-final in three seasons.

The Premiership side had other ideas. 

Twelve tries later – at the end of an 83-point thriller in which the player of the match award could arguably have gone, collectively, to the Quins’ pack but instead went to livewire Tyrone Green – Maxime Lucu missed a late conversion that would have won it for Bordeaux. 

As it was, Quins reached their first Champions Cup semi-final 41-42.

“We came out of the match against Saracens feeling euphoric, we couldn’t have played better," Lucu recalled. “We were too casual against Harlequins.

“We have to learn from that to start strong – and not concede two tries in 15 minutes.” Bordeaux aren’t thinking beyond Munster this weekend. They made that mistake last year, ignoring Harlequins and thinking ahead to a semi-final against Toulouse – and fell to a defeat that still hurts a year later.

“It left its mark on us, but it also served us well for the Top 14 play-offs a month later,” Lucu said. “It prepared us well for what awaited us. These matches are completely different from the group stage: you have to shift your mindset.

“We have to learn from our mistakes, otherwise, we’ll be back to square one.” 

Lesson one. Recovery. Training has been necessarily lighter this week, for two reasons – the six-day turnaround, and the intensity of last weekend’s win over Ulster.

Manager Yannick Bru said: “We’ve obviously targeted areas that interest us, but the priority was to recover well, with quite a few players among us having hardly trained.

“We had a few minor injuries and some players struggled to keep going [in the heat].

Lesson two. The breakdown. Bordeaux lost six turnovers against Ulster – Bru highlighted the issue on Sunday, and came back to it later in the week. 

“Everyone saw that Munster built their success on domination on the floor and in the contact zone against La Rochelle. We know the Irish wear down French teams a lot in this area. This was confirmed and our performance was below average against Ulster.” 

Lesson three. Rotation. Matthieu Jalibert and Damian Penaud were notable absentees against Harlequins last season because of injury at the business end of a long and difficult campaign. 

Both are fit and in the starting line-up this time around. So is, as expected, Louis Bielle-Biarrey, who was rested last weekend; while Marko Gazzotti returns from a week’s vacation to the bench.

Prop Jefferson Poirot and hooker Maxime Lamothe both passed late fitness tests and will also start, but fullback Romain Buros – one of France’s more solid players under the high ball – is out. 

He has been replaced by the promising Jon Echegaray, who last month scored the fastest try in Top 14 history, touching down seven seconds into the game against Perpignan.

Lesson four. Don’t be obvious. As well as work to improve Bordeaux’s efficiency at the breakdown – “this is an organisation issue, but also a state of mind,” Bru insisted – there will be opponent-specific tweaks to the gameplan.

So, while the training behind closed doors at Andre Moga – the club’s former stadium turned training ground – was far from physically exhausting, it will have been mentally intriguing. Will they attack from deep early, as they did against Ulster? Will they kick for territory, and try to keep Munster pinned in their own territory? 

Bru’s not saying. We’ll find out soon after kick-off.

The prize for Bordeaux, if they win at Chaban Delmas this weekend – a semi-final against either Toulon or Toulouse at the nearby Matmut Atlantique. And history on their side.

If Munster win, they either head to the Matmut Atlantique to face Toulouse, or the Stade Gerland in Lyon to take on Toulon.

Eight of the last 10 Champions Cup winners have enjoyed hosting advantages throughout the knockout phase of the competition. Only Toulouse, in 2021, and La Rochelle a year later have bucked that trend.

Since 2015, only two sides have lost a semi-final match in which they were the top-seeded sides, with hosting privileges – Racing 92, who lost to La Rochelle in Lens in 2022; and Leicester, who lost to Racing in Nottingham in 2016.

So, if Bordeaux win this weekend, history reckons they’ll go all the way to Cardiff. But, one fixed point at a time…