Yannick Bru: 'I thought, oh my god, it's going to happen again'

Union Bordeaux-Bègles head coach Yannick Bru has praised his players for bouncing back from a “complete nightmare” at the end of last season to lift the 2025 Investec Champions Cup in Cardiff at the first time of asking.

UBB ended their long wait for European glory with a dramatic 28–20 victory over Northampton Saints.

The win marks the first time the French club has claimed the title and comes just 12 months after back-to-back heartbreaks—losing a Champions Cup semi-final to Harlequins and being dismantled by Toulouse in the Top 14 final in Marseille.

The post-match press conference was briefly interrupted by a jubilant group of semi-naked Bordeaux players who stormed in, dousing Bru, captain Jefferson Poirot and scrum-half Maxime Lucu in beer and champagne.

Bru, visibly emotional and fighting back tears at the final whistle, told the press conference: “Well yes, these are very special times. Sometimes it’s a bit hard. I just want to share it with the people that count.

“And what counts are the two players on my right-hand side [Poirot and Lucu], when I knew I would be spending some time with them after. After my family, the second family is that of the UBB. And honestly, while Max was speaking and Jeff was speaking, I was thinking, the year that has gone past… we’ve been under a steamroller one year ago.

“We ended last year’s season with a complete nightmare; and hats off to the two leaders, Max and Jeff, because we really worked hard to get up and regain our trust and self-confidence, and what they’ve accomplished in one year is incredible.

“I’m very, very proud of them.”

This victory marked the club’s first major trophy since its formation in 2006, a win Bru described as “absolutely delicious”.

“The journey we’ve been through over the last year, that’s really what we need to keep in mind. Superficially, trophies are important for us. If we had lost, because I thought in the last ten minutes ‘no, we are going to lose the match’, I thought hats off to the performance staff, as we had worked really hard. The staff have put a lot of players back onto the pitch. And we were in good form, and against Northampton, that counted in many moments of the match.

“I had very bad memories in Cardiff. I suffered a loss of sixty points as an international and I lost here more than not. I had a lot of nightmares here and I thought, ‘oh my god, it’s going to happen again’. This is the one that counts the most, this win, as it was absolutely magnificent.”

On the field, Bordeaux’s superior power and precision proved decisive, with Damian Penaud crossing twice and second rows Adam Coleman and Cyril Cazeaux also scoring. Despite two tries from flanker Alex Coles and a committed Saints performance, Bordeaux’s superiority ultimately told.

Captain Lucu and fly-half Matthieu Jalibert managed the closing stages with assurance as Bordeaux joined the pantheon of French Champions Cup winners, making it five in a row for Top 14 clubs.

“There’s a lot of happiness,” said man of the match Lucu. “We wanted to be there at the final. Although there is a lot of pressure to enjoy the moment, we really wanted to win that trophy.

“We are so happy this evening for the club, the players, the staff, and the players who could not be with us on the pitch today, it was a real consecration.”

Veteran Bordeaux loosehead Jefferson Poirot was equally overjoyed at the historic win: “There is so much joy, I’ve waited so long for this.

“It’s the fruit of lots of work done over the last two seasons. It’s the slap in the face that we’ve bounced back from. We come to the place where we lost last year and we followed what he said and really went for it.”