Blistering Bordeaux humiliate helpless Leinster to retain Champions Cup
MAGNIFIQUE: Union Bordeaux Bègles' Cameron Woki celebrates with the Champions Cup Trophy and teammates after the match. Pic: INPHO/James Crombie
Leinster’s Champions Cup final drought will drag into another year after reigning champions Bordeaux-Begles turned up the heat in a scorching Bilbao and subjected the province to a punishing defeat on Saturday afternoon.
A fifth losing final since their last tournament win here in the Basque Country in 2018, this will cut deeper than any of the agonisingly tight reversals that preceded it. This was a landslide. A humiliation. They look further away from the well than ever.
The margin of victory veered for a few second-half minutes into record territory, the 29 points the winners had to spare late in the fourth quarter standing as one more than Leinster enjoyed at the end of their win over Ulster in Twickenham back in 2012. That about sums it up.
The hope was that Leinster could click on this biggest of days after a season marked by imperfections. It never happened. Mistakes were made, luck deserted them, and ‘UBB’ were the last team they needed to meet with all that in mind.
It was all over by half-time.
Yannick Bru’s side made it back-to-back wins on the basis of a first-half where they took advantage of every opening big and small. They are an elite team playing sensational rugby and they are the most deserving of winners.
Widen the lens and this is a sixth success in a row for the Top 14 with Toulouse and La Rochelle having claimed a pair each as well. For Leinster the question now is where do they go from here? Or maybe, where can they go from here?
Leo Cullen will come under pressure. Jacques Nienaber too. And for so many of their top players it is yet another blot – or a yawning gap - on individual CVs that can boast honours at Test level with Ireland and the British and Irish Lions.
The similarities with Montpellier’s thumping of Ulster the night before were eerie.
As was the case in the Challenge Cup final, the Irish side struck first, in this instance through Tommy O’Brien after a long and concerted period of pressure in the UBB third. Harry Byrne added the extras. Game on? No.
What’s that saying about making your own luck? Leinster made sure theirs was bad.
They made a mess of the resultant restart, and a lineout that followed. That set the foundation for the Top 14 side’s dominance. Cameron Woki had a try disallowed for touching the whitewash, but it was a very brief reprieve.
Their opener came within the blink of an eye, Maxime Lucu sniping over after a pummeling of the line by the grunts. Four minutes later and Pablo Uberti cantered over wide out off a first-phase scrum move in the 22. The blitz blitzed.
Leinster had reason to rue a bad Louis Bielle-Biarrey kick going dead off the fingertips of Hugo Keenan in the run-up, but the simple fact is that the vaunted Jacques Nienaber defence was shredded, and not for the last time.
The water break that followed came like an act of mercy, but the reprieve was brief.
Yoram Moefana almost careered through a dogleg, but Leinster were stretched from one side to the next before Bielle-Biarrey got the ball in space and danced through two tackles to claim a third for the champions.
Three 22 entries, three tries. Awesome stuff.
Leinster were just not at it. There were mistakes sprinkled in, they ran into endless brick walls and they soaked far too many tackles. The last thing they needed was a loose, bouncing ball off an attempted Matthieu Jalibert kick falling to Bielle-Biarrey.
Do we need to say what happened next?
LBB lighting up Bilbao for Union Bordeaux Bègles ✨#InvestecChampionsCup pic.twitter.com/enCpGMUBpZ
— Investec Champions Cup (@ChampionsCup) May 23, 2026
Down 28-7, with Lucu’s kicking immaculate as the rest of his game, Leinster needed the safety of the sheds. If only. There was one more punch in the gut before that, Harry Byrne’s careless pass being intercepted by Moefana and run home.
The tale of woe at the break read 35-7. The same as Ulster’s 14 years earlier, with 40 to play.
Leinster returned with greater energy, Bordeaux with the look of a side happy to see the rest of this thing out. Lucu getting a yellow card for a hair pull on Joe McCarthy spoke for that casualness and Leinster made them pay with a Joe McCarthy try.
Ciaran Frawley, on for Byrne soon after the restart, struck the post with a gettable kick and any chance of a comeback for the ages died on the back of three promising attacks that came up short. This wouldn’t be Cardiff in 2011 again.
Lucu had returned in time for the third of those defenseive sets and the classy scrum-half added two penalties to take the margin out to 29 points before Garry Ringrose brought Leinster back under that unwanted record loss marker with a converted try.
All told, a disastrous weekend for Irish rugby given Ulster’s hiding at the hands of Montpellier on Friday night, and it will leave a feeling in the pit of the stomach all too similar to Paris in early February when Ireland were filleted by the French.
H Keenan; T O’Brien, G Ringrose, R Henshaw, R Ioane; H Byrne, J Gibson-Park; A Porter, D Sheehan, T Clarkson; J McCarthy, J Ryan; J Conan, J van der Flier, C Doris.
T Furlong for Clarkson and C Frawley for Byrne (both 45); J Osborne for Henshaw (51); R Kelleher for Sheehan (54); M Deegan for Conan (60); P McCarthy for Porter (64); R Henshaw for Keenan (65); D Mangan for J McCarthy (71); L McGrath for Gibson-Park (74).
S Rayasi; P Uberti, D Penaud, Y Moefana, L Bielle-Biarrey; M Jalibert, M Lucu; J Poirot, M Lamothe, C Sadie; B Palu, A Coleman; P Bochaton, C Woki, M Gazzotti.
T Matiu for Bochaton (10-17) and for Woki (50); L Swinton for Coleman (41); B Tameifuna for Sadie and U Boniface for Poirot (both 49); G Barlot for Lamothe B Vergnes-Taillefer for Gazotti (both 55); A Retiere for Uberti (64); H Reus for Jalibert (71).
K Dickson (Eng).
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