Bordeaux Retain Champions Cup With 41-19 Rout of Leinster
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- Bordeaux-Begles retained the Champions Cup with a 41-19 victory over Leinster at San Mames Stadium in Bilbao, scoring five tries in a devastating first half that built a 35-7 halftime lead before a crowd of 52,327.
- Captain Maxime Lucu led the try-scoring with one try and slotted five conversions plus two penalties for 17 points, with the only blemish on his performance a 42nd-minute yellow card for pulling Joe McCarthy's hair.
- Winger Louis Bielle-Biarrey scored twice to bring his tournament tally to 10 tries, taking tries from the Lucu/Uberti/Bielle-Biarrey/Bielle-Biarrey/Moefana sequence that buried Leinster before the break.
- Leinster have now lost five Champions Cup finals since their 2018 triumph, with the past four defeats all inflicted by French opposition — La Rochelle (2022, 2023), Toulouse (2024, extra time), and now Bordeaux.
- French clubs have won six consecutive Champions Cups (Toulouse, La Rochelle, La Rochelle, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Bordeaux), and Bordeaux completed a French double over Irish provinces on the weekend after Montpellier beat Ulster in the Challenge Cup final.
- Bordeaux's title defense is built in part on the work of Irishman Noel McNamara, who coaches the club's attack and whose fingerprints are visible on the tries that sliced through Leinster's defense.
- Bordeaux will chase a third straight Champions Cup next season, a feat only Toulon (2013-15) has achieved in the professional era.
Why it matters: Bordeaux's demolition completes a clean French sweep of European club rugby's top two competitions this weekend and stretches French dominance of the Champions Cup to six straight titles, while Leinster — the most decorated club of the professional era in terms of semi-final appearances — now face a fifth final loss since 2018 with no obvious route past the French stranglehold.
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