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Top 14 2020/21 club-by-club season preview: Bordeaux

Bordeaux Begles' French centre Remi Lamerat (Photo by ROMAIN PERROCHEAU / AFP) (Photo by ROMAIN PERROCHEAU/AFP via Getty Images)

It’s a stretch to say Bordeaux would probably have won the 2019/20 Top 14 season – there were, after all, nine rounds of the regular season and the play-offs to go. It’s not a stretch to say they were, week-in week-out, the best side in the Top 14. There’s no reason not to expect more of the same in this campaign.

Key signing

Joseph Dweba. All respect to the outlandishly talented Ben Lam, but the try-loving hooker could turn out to be the Top 14 signing of the season – and he opened his account as part of a pushover collective a minute from the final whistle of the opening match of preseason. An honourable mention is deserved, though, for Lam. Bordeaux, already scary, are going to be terrifying.

Key departure

Semi Radradra. No side – not even one that has recruited and retained as well as Bordeaux – could escape losing Radradra unscathed. Frankly if he’d opted to stay at Chaban-Delmas rather than head to Bristol it would be best to give Bordeaux next season’s Top 14 title and pre-qualify them for the Champions Cup quarters.

They say

“If I don’t use them, it’s a skill issue. When I went to Bordeaux, I saw the profile of the team, what the players are capable of doing. With Jalibert or Botica, who are very offensive, if I do not get them to attack, I am the king of idiots” (Head coach Christophe Urios, francetvsport)

We say

It was one of the great mysteries of the Top 14 – how a side as full of individual talent as Bordeaux could not even finish in the play-off places, let alone challenge for the title. Under Raphael Ibanez, Jacques Brunel and Rory Teague – and then under the interim charge of Joe Worsley – they were a side that flattered to deceive.

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The answer, it turned out, was simple. There was no team culture, no identity to speak of. That has been Christophe Urios’s great coaching trick. Identify and latch on to a culture and build a team spirit. He did it at Oyonnax. He did it at Castres. And he’s doing it at Bordeaux.

Bordeaux cultural creator

Only at Bordeaux, he first had to create a culture because, bizarrely, there was none. The one he’s created is based around good living, family and enjoyment. And that’s what drives Bordeaux’s ambitious, attacking, joyous rugby now.

Interestingly, the style he developed at Bordeaux is very different from the workmanlike, no-frills ones he made a virtue at Castres and Oyonnax. That worked at both clubs – players and their fans bought into the work ethic, team first thing.

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It would have been easy for him to take that and work it into the Bordeaux system. That he didn’t – that he saw the team he had and adopted his planning to their strengths – is testament to him as a coach. There is no such thing Urios-ball.

Attacking style

At Bordeaux, he has the tools for all-out attacking play. That’s what they did in his first season, to great effect. Expect more of the same wave-after-wave attack-and-counter this season. And, unlike Toulouse, Racing 92 or Montpellier, they won’t lose as many players to the congested international calendar. This season could be Bordeaux’s.

Arrivals

Ben Tameifuna; Joseph Dweba; Maxime Lamothe; Guido Petti; Pablo Uberti; Ben Lam; Nathanael Hulleu

Departures

Peni Ravai; Leonardo Ghiraldini; Adrien Pelissie; Florian Dufour; Masalosalo Tutaia; Lucas Meret; Semi Radradra; Blair Connor; Nicolas Plazy

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J
JW 2 hours ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Ok, managed to read the full article..

... New Zealand’s has only 14 and the professional season is all over within four months. In France, club governance is the responsibility of an independent organisation [the Ligue Nationale de Rugby or LNR] which is entirely separate from the host union [the Fédération Française de Rugby or FFR]. Down south New Zealand Rugby runs the provincial and the national game.

That is the National Provincial Championship, a competition of 14 representative union based teams run through the SH international window and only semi professional (paid only during it's running). It is run by NZR and goes for two and a half months.


Super Rugby is a competition involving 12 fully professional teams, of which 5 are of New Zealand eligibility, and another joint administered team of Pacific Island eligibility, with NZR involvement. It was a 18 week competition this year, so involved (randomly chosen I believe) extra return fixtures (2 or 3 home and away derbys), and is run by Super Rugby Pacific's own independent Board (or organisation). The teams may or may not be independently run and owned (note, this does not necessarily mean what you think of as 'privately owned').


LNR was setup by FFR and the French Government to administer the professional game in France. In New Zealand, the Players Association and Super Rugby franchises agreed last month to not setup their own governance structure for professional rugby and re-aligned themselves with New Zealand Rugby. They had been proposing to do something like the English model, I'm not sure how closely that would have been aligned to the French system but it did not sound like it would have French union executive representation on it like the LNR does.

In the shaky isles the professional pyramid tapers to a point with the almighty All Blacks. In France the feeling for country is no more important than the sense of fierce local identity spawned at myriad clubs concentrated in the southwest. Progress is achieved by a nonchalant shrug and the wide sweep of nuanced negotiation, rather than driven from the top by a single intense focus.

Yes, it is pretty much a 'representative' selection system at every level, but these union's are having to fight for their existence against the regime that is NZR, and are currently going through their own battle, just as France has recently as I understand it. A single focus, ala the French game, might not be the best outcome for rugby as a whole.


For pure theatre, it is a wonderful article so far. I prefer 'Ntamack New Zealand 2022' though.

The young Crusader still struggles to solve the puzzle posed by the shorter, more compact tight-heads at this level but he had no problem at all with Colombe.

It was interesting to listen to Manny during an interview on Maul or Nothing, he citied that after a bit of banter with the All Black's he no longer wanted one of their jersey's after the game. One of those talks was an eye to eye chat with Tamaiti Williams, there appear to be nothing between the lock and prop, just a lot of give and take. I thought TW angled in and caused Taylor to pop a few times, and that NZ were lucky to be rewarded.

f you have a forward of 6ft 8ins and 145kg, and he is not at all disturbed by a dysfunctional set-piece, you are in business.

He talked about the clarity of the leadership that helped alleviate any need for anxiety at the predicaments unfolding before him. The same cannot be said for New Zealand when they had 5 minutes left to retrieve a match winning penalty, I don't believe. Did the team in black have much of a plan at any point in the game? I don't really call an autonomous 10 vehicle they had as innovative. I think Razor needs to go back to the dealer and get a new game driver on that one.

Vaa’i is no match for his power on the ground. Even in reverse, Meafou is like a tractor motoring backwards in low gear, trampling all in its path.

Vaa'i actually stops him in his tracks. He gets what could have been a dubious 'tackle' on him?

A high-level offence will often try to identify and exploit big forwards who can be slower to reload, and therefore vulnerable to two quick plays run at them consecutively.

Yes he was just standing on his haunches wasn't he? He mentioned that in the interview, saying that not only did you just get up and back into the line to find the opposition was already set and running at you they also hit harder than anything he'd experienced in the Top 14. He was referring to New Zealands ultra-physical, burst-based Super style of course, which he was more than a bit surprised about. I don't blame him for being caught out.


He still sent the obstruction back to the repair yard though!

What wouldn’t the New Zealand rugby public give to see the likes of Mauvaka and Meafou up front..

Common now Nick, don't go there! Meafou showed his Toulouse shirt and promptly got his citizenship, New Zealand can't have him, surely?!?


As I have said before with these subjects, really enjoy your enthusiasm for their contribution on the field and I'd love to see more of their shapes running out for Vern Cotter and the like styled teams.

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