Bordeaux mix beauty and beast to shatter brave Saints

BBC News

24-05-2025

It wasn't just Damian Penaud celebrating astride a model zebra that gave a surreal air to the Champions Cup final aftermath.On the touchline, Henry Pollock was trying to get to grips with a strange new reality."Sometimes it's not your day I guess," he told 5 Live Sport. "Sport can be cruel."Or so he has heard.So far, this season, the game has lavished only glory and garlands on the back row star.In this breakout campaign, Pollock had won 14 of the 17 games he had started before today.He began it on Saints bench and will finish it on a British and Irish Lions tour.On his last visit to this stadium, he scored two tries on his England debut.In the last round of this competition, he skinned Sam Prendergast for an astonishing try in a tremendous victory.He was manhandled by Saracens back row last weekend, but still emerged victorious. This time though his streak came to a full stop."Every time Pollock was anywhere near the ball there was an acceleration in the Bordeaux players to get to him," said Paul Grayson, part of the last Northampton team to win Europe's premier competition, on BBC Radio 5 Live."They all had eyes on him."They singled him out as a difference-maker and he'll have to work out how to deal with that as his career goes forwards."Saints coach Phil Dowson later claimed that Bordeaux's players had targetted Pollock after the final whistle as well, describing an incident in which his player appeared to be grabbed around the throat as "uncalled for and out of order".
Pollock didn't play badly. None of Northampton did.The 20-year-old made more metres than any other forward on the pitch. He turned over one ball in the shadow of his own posts and was a key part of a heroic rearguard. For much of the second half, Northampton defended their line like they had been backed up to a cliff edge.At the other end, Pollock twice streaked away for scores that had the Principality's rafters rattling and threatened to turn Saints' resistance into all-out rebellion.On both occasions though, the overworked television match official stepped in to rule them out.The score didn't stand. And by the final whistle, on the scene of their sucker-punch final defeat by Leinster in 2011, neither did Saints.Their route to victory was always a thin and perilous one.Captain Fraser Dingwall had explained earlier in the week that his side needed to keep the tempo high and ball moving to tire out Bordeaux's heavy brigade up front.He admitted though that doing so flirted with another danger.Because Bordeaux's backline, marshalled by the quicksilver Mathieu Jalibert and laced with the pace of Penaud and Louis Bielle-Biarrey, is the most dangerous in the competition off turnover ball and in broken field.No opposition had managed to strike that balance successfully against them so far.Bordeaux scored an average of 42 points a game in the knockout stages. They averaged more than eight tries a game in the pools. Seven games, seven resounding wins.No-one has even got close.Saints though did get close.After a helter-skelter first half, they were level at 20-20. A combination of a fast start, a couple of glitchy kicks from Jalibert, some doughty defence and a readiness to go toe-to-toe with Bordeaux for ambition bought them parity.When Pollock bolted through for a score that never was early in the second half, it felt like the underdogs might have their day.Bordeaux though had come prepared.Northampton's attempt to drain their batteries was foiled by the bench buzzing with power and six forwards. As they unloaded their replacements, Northampton were squeezed back into their own half.Saints' plan was also undermined by a lack of luck and discipline.Injuries to James Ramm and George Furbank in the first five minutes robbed them of two of their back three and some fluidity.Early in the second half a yellow card for replacement Ed Prowse, for going high on Yoram Moefana, put them on the back foot.Marius Jonker's South African tones regularly interrupted play as well as the TMO helped out with hairline calls, giving Bordeaux time to catch their breath.
Northampton needed everything to fall their way. In the end, too few things did.Penaud may have been riding a zebra by the end, but a boa constrictor would have been more appropriate given the way his side throttled the life out of the game in the final quarter.The stadium public address system throbbed to Sash's 90s dance monster Encore En Fois after the final whistle and it was easy to imagine that, with their upwardly mobile set of stars, Bordeaux will indeed be repeat winners in the next few years.Dingwall was alongside Pollock as he gave his post-match interview.As he has done throughout a run that has been such a welcome break from Saints' dreary Premiership form, the skipper found the right words."Tonight, I think we celebrate us and the run we have had," he said. "We didn't come out on the right side of the result, but there is still so much to be proud of."We will stick together."After the losses of Courtney Lawes, Lewis Ludlam and Alex Waller at the end of last season, and David Ribbans the previous summer, that might be enough.If they stay intact as a group, Pollock, Fin Smith, Tommy Freeman, Ollie Sleightholme, Alex Coles, Tom Pearson, Emmanuel Iyogun and George Hendy are a fine, young core to build on.Sport is cruel, but the future might be kinder on Saints.