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France 24
23-05-2025
- Sport
- France 24
Penaud recovers from injury to start Champions Cup final
Penaud has been sidelined since the semi-final victory over Toulouse earlier this month with an ankle injury. The 28-year-old has scored 21 tries this season for club and country and forms a lethal partnership with fellow winger Louis Bielle-Biarrey. Head coach Yannick Bru has made six other changes to his team from last weekend's Top 14 win over Castres including naming Tonga heavyweight prop Ben Tameifuna on the bench. For Northampton, England winger Ollie Sleightholme is among the substitutes having been out since March with an ankle injury. Director of rugby Phil Dowson has named winger James Ramm, flanker Alex Coles, lock Temo Mayanavanua and hooker Curtis Langdon in the starting XV. The quartet all suffered injuries in last Saturday's Premiership win over Saracens. Teams: Northampton: George Furbank; Tommy Freeman, Fraser Dingwall (capt), Rory Hutchinson, James Ramm; Fin Smith, Alex Mitchell; Henry Pollock, Josh Kemeny, Alex Coles; Tom Lockett, Temo Mayanavanua; Trevor Davison, Curtis Langdon, Emmanuel Iyogun Replacements: Craig Wright, Tarek Haffar, Elliot Millar-Mills, Ed Prowse, Angus Scott-Young, Tom James, Tom Litchfield, Ollie Sleightholme Coach: Phil Dowson (ENG) Bordeaux-Begles: Romain Buros; Damian Penaud, Nicolas Depoortere, Yoram Moefana; Louis Bielle-Biarrey; Matthieu Jalibert, Maxime Lucu (capt), Pete Samu, Guido Petti, Mahamadou Diaby, Cyril Cazeaux, Adam Coleman; Sipili Falatea, Maxime Lamothe, Jefferson Poirot Coach: Yannick Bru (FRA)
Irish Times
23-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Joey Carbery not selected in matchday squad for Bordeaux Bègles for Champions Cup final
Joey Carbery has missed out on the Bordeaux Bègles matchday squad for their Champions Cup final against Northampton at the Principality Stadium on Saturday (kick-off 2.45pm, live on RTÉ and Premier Sports). Although he has played in virtually every UBB game in recent months, and started the Round of 16 win over Ulster, as against his former team Munster in the semi-finals, Carbery is a victim of the decision by head coach Yannick Bru to go with a 6-2 split on the bench. Carbery, who won a Champions Cup with Leinster in 2017-18 when an unused sub in the final against Racing 92 in Bilbao, has played 20 games for UBB since joining them last summer, seven of them off the bench. He is particularly unlucky to miss out on the club's first Champions Cup final after playing in five of their seven games en route to the decider, starting the wins over Ulster and the Sharks in the pool stages, as well as that Round of 16 game. READ MORE Bordeaux Bègles have been given a significant boost by the inclusion of Damian Penaud, who has been sidelined since what looked like a season-ending ankle injury in their convincing 35-18 semi-final win over Toulouse three weeks ago left him in tears. Penaud has scored 21 tries this season for club and country, including a record 12 in this Champions Cup campaign, and looked like his sprightly self in their Friday Captains Run under the enclosed Principality Stadium roof. The starting XV remains unchanged from that semi-final, with the only two alterations on the bench seeing the return of prop Ugo Boniface and centre Rohan Janse Van Rensburg at the expense of Carbery. Northampton have also welcomed back England fullback George Furbank, although he has only played one game in the calendar year since suffering a broken arm last December. Curtis Langdon, James Ramm and Alex Coles have all recovered from injuries in last week's 28-24 win over Saracens, with Ramm switching from fullback to wing and Coles from the secondrow to blindside compared to the starting XV in their 37-34 semi-final win over Leinster. Tom Lockett is named in the secondrow, with Josh Kemeny and Henry Pollock shifting to seven and eight, compared to that semi-final in the absence of the Ulster-bound Juarno Augustus, who is not expected to feature again this season due to an injury during training before the Saracens match. Union Bordeaux Bègles : Romain Buros; Damian Penaud, Nicolas Depoortere, Yoram Moefana, Louis Bielle-Biarrey; Matthieu Jalibert, Maxime Lucu (capt), Jefferson Poirot, Maxime Lamothe, Sipili Falatea, Adam Coleman, Cyril Cazeaux, Mahamadou Diaby, Guido Petti, Pete Samu. Replacements: Connor Sa, Ugo Boniface, Ben Tameifuna, Pierre Bochaton, Bastien Vergnes-Taillefer, Marko Gazzotti, Arthur Retiere, Rohan Janse van Rensburg Northampton Saints: George Furbank; Tommy Freeman, Fraser Dingwall (capt), Rory Hutchinson, James Ramm; Fin Smith, Alex Mitchell; Emmanuel Iyogun, Curtis Langdon, Trevor Davison; Temo Mayanavanua, Tom Lockett; Alex Coles, Josh Kemeny, Henry Pollock. Replacements: Craig Wright, Tarek Haffar, Elliot Millar-Mills, Ed Prowse, Angus Scott-Young, Tom James, Tom Litchfield, Ollie Sleightholme
Irish Examiner
02-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
Only one thing counts as Bordeaux and Toulouse square up
There are several ways to approach Sunday's all-Top 14 Champions Cup semi-final between Bordeaux and Toulouse. Depending on your starting point, it's one, or more, or all, of the following: a high-stakes face-off between by far the two best sides in France; ambitious rugby upstarts versus the game's establishment princes; a rerun of last year's Top 14 final, or the 2021 Champions Cup semi-final; and, therefore, a two-in-one chance for revenge for Bordeaux; an early preview of this year's probable Top 14 final at the end of June; time for Toulouse to correct the record after not one but two defeats to the same opponents already this season; and/or a first opportunity for Bordeaux to test themselves for the first time this campaign against full-bore jeu de mains, jeu de Toulousains after a pair of mixed league wins over heavily rotated 23s. Alternatively, it's none of the above. Both Bordeaux and Toulouse have hit bumps on the road to the Matmut Atlantique. And, fair — or, rather, unfair — warning: Sunday's stormy weather forecast is unconducive to both sides' first-choice high-pace, fling-it rugby. Last Saturday, La Rochelle defended Bordeaux off the ball and out of the game at Stade Chaban Delmas. It definitely wasn't pretty rugby. Whether it was clever is debatable. But it was effective — which is easily taken for clever in the right light. Toulouse boss Ugo Mola, no doubt, watched with interest. Bordeaux's Yannick Bru admitted to Midi Olympique this week that the result, 'was clearly a setback, a drop in vigilance, a drop in all our performance standards'. But he insisted it was nothing more than a blip — an important lesson. 'We quickly debriefed,' he said, 'because you can watch it over and over again, we will always lose — and it wasn't a priority.' There's no denying, though, this was a badly timed defeat. Bordeaux selected as close to their first-choice squad as injuries and rest periods would allow. The expectation, clearly, was to bring a four-match winning streak, with all the confidence that adds, into this weekend. Instead, they were a long way second best at home against a side that had, only the previous weekend, finally broken a 105-day winless run. That hurts. Doubly so, for a side competing on two fronts at the start of the business end of the season. Worse, it means they remain vulnerable to a late Top 14 charge from third-placed Toulon — who welcome both the top two sides to Stade Mayol in the closing weeks of the regular season. Meanwhile, the limits of Toulouse's much-vaunted squad depth are being stress-tested. Losing Antoine Dupont to an ACL injury during the Six Nations seemed to have barely slowed them. They have won five of their six matches in all competitions since he was helped off the Aviva Stadium pitch in early March. Their only defeat? At Bordeaux. Paul Graou — a scrum-half too good to wear the term 'understudy', for all that's exactly what he joined Toulouse knowing he would be — and Japan international Naoto Saito have done their jobs admirably, as they should, after the club passed on the idea of seeking a medical joker to cover Dupont's extended absence. But Saito suffered an ankle injury in the win over Stade Francais a fortnight ago. Two weeks previously, Italian international Ange Capuozzo — slated as additional cover at nine — also injured his ankle in the Champions Cup round-of-16 win over Sale. On Saturday, Toulouse put 52 points on Castres at Stadium Toulouse, with a 19-year-old at nine on his second senior start. He scored his first senior try before ceding his place to an 18-year-old replacement making his big boy debut off the bench. Both of them are, already, France under-U20 internationals. A Champions Cup semi-final, however, is far from what was already close to a no-consequences late-season domestic clash — notwithstanding that it was a derby — for the Top 14 leaders and Champions Cup holders. Early this week, reports suggested Saito and Capuozzo were in line to return for tomorrow's Sunday's semi-final trip. That was the good news, after Graou had been kept as far away from the pitch as propriety would allow last weekend. But that was drowned out by waves of bad from the Toulouse camp. Blair Kinghorn has been sidelined until the end of May at the earliest with a knee injury in last Saturday's victory. The club confirmed on Wednesday that hooker Peato Mauvaka is out for several months with a knee injury. Then, on Thursday, reports broke that fullback and goalkicker Thomas Ramos, could miss the last-four match because of a calf strain. Sunday's semi-final is the first match of the rest of the season for the top two in French rugby's top flight. It might be time to set aside hopes of a bravura, springtime showpiece. Given the expected conditions in Bordeaux and the understandable stakes, only one thing matters.
