Donal Lenihan: Leinster didn't know what hit them in Bilbao blitz

COOKED: Leinster’s Tommy O'Brien, Jamison Gibson-Park, Harry Byrne during a water break. Pic: INPHO/Nick Elliott

Previewing the European decider between Leinster and Bordeaux on RTÉ radio with Des Cahill last Friday morning, I ventured that this final represented a defining moment for so many Leinster players. They had achieved so much with Ireland and the British and Irish Lions but, for the majority, the Champions Cup was clearly a case of unfinished business.

With so much baggage on board on the back of losing three finals over the last four years, one in their backyard at the Aviva Stadium, this was the game that would define the legacy of so many outstanding individuals as Leinster players.

In Cork airport later that morning, I read Ronan O Gara’s column on these pages. The message articulated by him was along the same lines. “The most painful thing for any sportsperson is sitting on the couch with aching regret”. He’s so right. To borrow a line from Oasis, as a retired professional, how many rugby players have cause to “look back in anger”.

For those Leinster players, not to mention the coaches and wider management, they woke up yesterday morning to their greatest nightmare, one that will haunt them for a long time to come. Such was the comprehensive nature of this latest final defeat, Leinster have some serious soul searching to do now.

So much was said and written in advance of kick off as to where this contest would be won and lost, yet apart from the opening phase when Leinster raced into a seven-point lead on the back of a Tommy O Brien try, it was practically one-way traffic from there on in.

The one intangible that impacted the course of the game, as I experienced firsthand on Friday night at Ulster’s Challenge Cup final, was the stifling heat and humidity. Checking pitch side an hour before kick off on Saturday, one of the ground staff informed me that it was four degrees cooler than the previous night.

Great. That reduced temperatures to 29c. At least there was a bit of a breeze circulating at ground level and it helped enormously when water breaks were approved for Saturday’s final on the 20- and 60-minute mark.

Such was the superiority and overall class of this incredibly well-balanced Bordeaux Begles side, it’s fair to say, while the conditions were far from ideal, they didn’t impact the game to anything like the same extent as the Challenge Cup final.

By the time the first water break was introduced, Leinster were trailing 14-7 despite the boost of that try from O Brien. If anything Leinster’s early try only served to galvanize a Bordeaux side who just got better and better as the half progressed.

Trailing 28-7 when the clock turned red to signal half-time, Leinster were awarded a penalty by English referee Karl Dickson. My immediate reaction, given it was deep in their own 22, was to kick the ball dead, regroup at the break given the management would already have decided who was going to speak and what tactical messages were going to be imparted.

In a brave but ill-advised act of defiance, however, Leinster tapped the penalty in an attempt to counterattack from deep and salvage some badly needed points before the break. Instead, the worst possible outcome emerged when Bordeaux’s hard-hitting centre Yoram Moefana intercepted a loose pass from Harry Byrne on halfway to sprint home unopposed At 28-7, Leinster had some chance. Heading to the dressing room 35-7 down, against a team defending for their lives, made their task impossible. It was very much a case of game over. Nobody saw the extent of Bordeaux’s superiority, on both sides of the ball, impressively delivered on the biggest stage of their season to date. The capacity to do that is what separates champions from the rest.

The dogs on the street were aware of the attacking threat posed by the magnificent Louis Brielle-Biarrey but his support act, right across their back line, was sensational. To have any chance of competing, Leinster had to find a way of slowing down Bordeaux’s ability to recycle quickly at the breakdown in order to buy time for their blitz defense to have the desired impact.

Despite fielding a back row of proven quality, power and experience in Jack Conan, Caelan Doris and Josh van der Flier, Leinster never got anywhere near achieving that. On the day that mattered most, the holders brought their all court game, outplaying Leinster in every key sector.

The manner and ferocity in which they competed at every breakdown disarmed Leinster in an area they dominate so often. They were also repelled in the carrying department and denied any semblance of eking out those key metres after contact.

As a result, Leinster’s onrushing defensive line speed that defines the Jacques Nienaber inspired blitz was having to launch off the back foot and barely got to register a single dominant tackle. In the ultimate of ironies it was Bordeaux, led by the irrepressible Moefanu, who imposed a semi blitz that managed to close down any attacking space available to Leinster, manifesting itself with three intercepts at crucial times.

When Bordeaux’s attack was put under some semblance of pressure by Leinster’s line speed, such was their skill set and passing ability even off set pieces, they invariably managed to get the ball wide to the five metre channels. That’s all the mercurial Brielle-Biarrey, the best winger in the game right now, needed.

Having already scored an astonishing 32 tries in 29 games for club and country this season, he dotted down twice more in a 10-minute spell before half time to break Leinster hearts. His impact didn’t end there. At one stage, he smashed Rieko Ioane in a tackle while also winning a number of key aerial battles, plucking the ball out of the beautiful Basque sky, in a further demonstration of his wonderful athleticism.

In advance of the final, it seemed too simplistic to suggest the outcome boiled down to pitting Bordeaux’s all-court attacking game against Leinster’s smothering defensive wall. Surely there was more to it than that. There was and so it proved with Bordeaux clearly superior in all the key aspects of the game. Leinster simply didn’t know what hit them.

Overall it proved a thoroughly demoralising weekend of action from an Irish perspective. If Bordeaux proved too hot to handle in the big one, Ulster were on the receiving end of an even more punishing 59-26 defeat on Friday night.

Given the core of experienced players they were missing heading into their decider against Montpellier, it was always going to prove a difficult ask when you consider their French opponents currently sit three places higher up the French Top 14 league table than Bordeaux.

In addition to those two, you have current league leaders Toulouse who supply more players to the French national team than Montpellier and Bordeaux combined. With that quality and depth available to national coach Fabien Galthie, French rugby is in a really good place 16 months out from next year's World Cup.

For Nienaber and Leo Cullen, the nature of Saturday’s alarming defeat was disastrous. With a Nations Cup series against Japan, Australia and New Zealand to come down under in July, I don’t think it has done Andy Farrell any favors either.