Irishman behind Bordeaux's attack makes admission after Champions Cup win

Union Bordeaux-Bègles attack coach Noel McNamara admitted his side’s Champions Cup final win over Northampton Saints was far from their most fluent performance of the season, despite securing a historic 28–20 victory in Cardiff.

The Irishman praised his players’ composure under pressure but conceded the opening stages were frustrating and that UBB’s execution at key moments left room for improvement.

“I suppose it’s a funny one. You’re happy with the result. Often finals are like that. I don’t think it was our best performance of the year,” he told Premier Sports.

“We started by conceding a try in the first couple of minutes after not dealing with that restart, which is particularly frustrating. But I thought we reacted well.”

While UBB ultimately controlled the scoreboard, McNamara said the fragmented nature of the contest and the early disruption caused by injuries and disciplinary moments only added to the pressure for his side.

“The game was stop-start as well, obviously. The unfortunate injuries to James Ramm and George Furbank in particular broke the rhythm a little bit.

“By and large, we could have converted a couple more of those five-metre opportunities.

“We saw against Leinster how well they defended in them. We wanted to have a little more variety… we probably ran out of variety a little early in the game, and we came a little bit of a cropper later in the game. I think we managed the game well, particularly at the end.

“Especially Max (Lucu) and Matthieu (Jalibert). And we’re just delighted to get across the line. We had a pretty negative experience in our last final.

“You can talk all you want, but you do need to get back to this stage and show that you’ve really got over it.

“There certainly was [pressure], no doubt about it. The longer it goes on, the pressure builds more and more. The reality for this group is that we’ve been together for two years. We got to the final [Top 14] last year in our first year, which was an awful lot of learning—not just for the players, for the coaches, for the admin staff, for everyone really; around the hotel, the logistics.

“To be honest about it, it’s been much better—those little bits and pieces.

“There’s no doubt that there’s a little bit of pressure. We’re playing 15 against 13 at one stage, and there’s pressure to score.

“We talked about making the most of Tommy Freeman’s time in the bin and trying to maximise that. We don’t do that, and that creates a little bit more pressure.

“You can talk about pressure and talk about privilege. It’s ultimately up to the boys. It’s a privilege to be playing in a stadium like this in a game of this magnitude. Boys have to go and do. The boys deserve an awful lot of credit for that.”