Bordeaux Begles overpowered Munster to take their place, albeit unconvincingly, in the Champions Cup semi-final.
The French outfit have so much firepower, yet they pick and choose when to turn it on. That might be fine in the earlier rounds of the competition, but at some stage it becomes harder to do, and you can't mess with momentum when you’re up against the stronger teams in the competition.
The winners of this competition are generally well-disciplined and as strong on the defensive side of the game as they are in attack. That can’t currently be said about Bordeaux.
They give up far too many cards and penalties to allow the opposition to stay with them when they could be far out of sight.
If they put as much effort and detail into their defence as they do in their lines of running, they’d be a more formidable Champion’s Cup team.
It could be said that with more focus on their defence, it might take away from some of their attacking threat, but I don’t believe that to be true. They don’t need to revolutionise their defensive system. They merely need to cut out errors and poor decisions.
It's also been said that Leinster put too much emphasis on their defence and their attacking potency is gone.
That’s clearly not true. It might have taken a bit longer to blend the two, but that’s most likely because of the amount of change that has happened in their defence. I don’t think Bordeaux need to go that far; however, they need to tighten something up if they’re going to beat Toulouse and then Leinster or Northampton.
Bordeaux were dragged into a battle against Munster, despite the Thomond Park team’s flat start and their inability to secure their lineout. Munster still scored 29 points with a rocky set piece against Bordeaux.
Munster wouldn’t have scored as many points with a setpiece that was so inefficient if they were up against Leinster or Toulouse. With the amount of ball that Munster threw away, 29 points is a very respectable tally.
Part of what made Bordeaux unconvincing was the Munster attacking threat in transition and phase play.
Munster played Bordeaux at their own game at times with fast rucks and movement of the ball. However, they didn’t have the fundamentals to really threaten Bordeaux over the course of 80 minutes.
Bordeaux have shown the same against Ulster. When they needed to find a gear, they could. However, that will become harder in the next round against Toulouse.
What Bordeaux possess is incredible potency and detail in their attack. When you have raw pace with players like Louis Bielle-Biarrey and Damian Penaud you’ll always cause trouble in attack. However, it’s the small detail in their attack that really sets the game alight and gives their threatening outside backs opportunity on the ball.
A great example of this is their first try in the opening minutes of the game at the weekend. It came from a left-hand side scrum about 15 metres from the touchline. They used Maxime Lucu as a decoy down the left-hand side of the scrum.
This is a minute detail that doesn’t seem so important. However, the effect of that is that Munster’s back field, Calvin Nash in this instance, must make sure that the right-hand side of his scrum is defended and therefore he’s not able to drop off and cover across the back field as early.
It must be noted that this is only possible if you have a confident setpiece - Lucu is only able to act as a decoy if there is a suitable deputy to distribute the ball.
Bordeaux regularly use their number 8, Pete Samu, in a distribution role and that’s exactly what they did in this instance. Samu happens to be an explosive ball-carrying option as well, so he’s seen as a carrying threat before throwing a 15-metre pass off his left hand.
With Lucu drawing Nash away and Samu throwing a wide pass to start the play, it meant that Munster were stretched, and Thaakir Abrahams closed early as a full-back.
Matthieu Jalibert identified that early movement and threaded through a perfect grubber kick for Penaud to score the opening try of the game. Had Lucu played the pass instead of Samu, Nash would have gambled and covered across the back field earlier to sweep up the kick in behind.
Abrahams’ aggressive close in the front line was based on their reliance on blindside wingers working hard across the pitch and Bordeaux took that away.
It’s a small detail, but it made all the difference when it came to Jalibert’s clarity in decision making. Noel McNamara is doing a great job in his attacking role with Bordeaux, and I’m sure he’s enjoying it too with the tools at his disposal.
However, defence and discipline generally get teams to the next level and if Bordeaux are to win this competition, they have a lot that they need to focus on away from their attack.
After back-to-back knockout weekends, the Champions Cup will take a break, and domestic action returns this weekend. There are two mouthwatering semi-finals to look forward to.
Everyone expects a repeat of the Toulouse and Leinster final from last year. If Bordeaux add more layers to their game away from their attack, they’ll have a say in this competition yet.
Watch a URC double-header, Stormers v Connacht and Munster v Bulls, on Saturday from 2.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player
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