The new Champions Cup season is only just under way but the defending champions Bordeaux are already having to battle for everything. The French side, chasing a third consecutive crown, were forced to weather a furious effort from a revitalised Gloucester in an outstanding contest and ultimately had to settle for a draw to complete a highly eventful visit to England. Four visiting players, including Louis Bielle-Biarrey, were held up for four hours on arrival by UK Border Control for failing to have a valid electronic travel authorisation (ETA), but stopping their star winger on the field tends to be slightly harder.
The French international, in his familiar red scrum cap, darted over for two sharp tries but could not quite prevent the Cherry and Whites from claiming a share of the spoils. Gloucester had been given momentary hope by two tries within five minutes by their lively former Harlequins back-rower Will Trenholm, making a serious impact off the bench. The classy Bielle-Biarrey, though, dragged his side back level and either side could have nicked it in the final quarter.
If this is a sign of what is to come in the tournament this season, it will be some ride between now and the final in Lyon in May. Bordeaux will certainly not forget this night in a hurry. In the absence of their injured French outside half Matthieu Jalibert, they picked their captain, Maxime Lucu, at No 10 but it was the deployment of their 150-kg prop Ben Tameifuna at lock that raised more eyebrows.
In the event the Gloucester scrum mostly gave their opponents a hard time until Bordeaux cranked up the second-half pressure. The game was four minutes old when their scrum-half Martin Page-Relo nipped smartly down the blindside for the opening score with the versatile Lucu nonchalantly adding the conversion. This one-off round of pool matches, sandwiched into the busy early season domestic programme, still potentially offered an opportunity to catch them slightly off guard.
Gloucester have made a promising start to their own Prem campaign and were full of early running on a cool, still evening. Arthur Clark crashed over to reward some sustained early pressure and there was plenty of interest, too, in Bordeaux’s first lineout throw. Would the massive Tameifuna suddenly soar like a mega-salmon?
And would any of his teammates be brave enough to try and hoist him skywards? Unsurprisingly, when the moment came, the big man was used as a decoy having initially stationed himself at scrum-half. Big Ben was also soon to be found sucking in seagulls as Gloucester deliberately sought to raise the tempo.
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