Bordeaux-Bègles 38 Bath 26

In the final reckoning, Bordeaux-Bègles underscored their status as the heavyweights of European club rugby by booking their place in a second successive Champions Cup final with the kind of rugby that will remain long in the memory. Without doubt they will be favourites to retain their crown against Leinster in Bilbao.

And yet, while the game got away from Bath in the closing moments in the city where they won their last title 28 years ago against Brive, Johann van Graan’s side took an important step forward in establishing their own credentials as potential future champions.

Parts of this Bath side may be breaking up next season, with Alfie Barbeary joining Saracens and Thomas du Toit returning to his native South Africa to rejoin the Sharks, but the depth of the squad remains intact. Dan du Preez will bolster their back row resources while Billy Sela, who replaced Du Toit off the bench in the final 10 minutes, is a tighthead prop with huge potential.

The champions of England found the step up just beyond them in a contest of high-octane, breathtaking quality and suffocating atmosphere, but they took the defending European champions to the wire. Bath will look back at moments when the pressure of the occasion affected their decision-making and execution, but within a context of the quality of the opposition they were facing.

To beat this Bordeaux team at this stage of the season and when they were backed by over 35,000 supporters was always going to be a massive undertaking, but the experience of taking the fight to them should put Bath in good stead for future European journeys, following their Challenge Cup triumph last year.

It was reminiscent of Saracens’ early forays deep into the European competition, when they lost to Toulon in the semi-final in 2013 and then again to the French side in the 2014 final, before going on to claim the first of three Heineken Cup titles two years later.

There were moments of controversy. Three head-high tackles on Barbeary were not sanctioned and once again the issue of the French director of review footage came under scrutiny, with Van Graan making a rare public complaint afterwards that the match officials did not seem to have the footage available to them to review the incidents.

Images of the incident involving Maxime Lucu and Barbeary just after half-time would suggest the Bordeaux scrum-half should have at least received a yellow card for a clear head-on-head collision. That Lucu delivered one of the outstanding European displays only underscored Bath’s frustration.

The ongoing issue of the footage that is made available to match officials in France has to be addressed once and for all. But it would be a stretch to say that the controversy had an impact on the result. This Bordeaux side are glorious to watch, their supporters provided colour and a wonderfully raucous backdrop. Bath had gone toe-to-toe with them during a unrelenting first-half – including a brace of tries for Will Muir – and yet still found themselves trailing by 12 points.

Bordeaux had come out of the blocks, as is their wont, with tries by Marko Gazzotti and the remarkable Louis Bielle-Biarrey (his 29th of the season, in 27 matches for club and country) in the first 15 minutes, with a controverted try by Lucu and penalty before the end of the half ensuring that Bath had to score next to claw themselves back into the game.

They did just that, with Louie Hennessey crossing after a series of pick and gos had tightened the Bordeaux defence, just moments after Santiago Carreras failed to hold a delicate pass by Finn Russell with the line at his mercy. It made it a five-point game, and there was a glorious moment when Arundell found himself in a race with Bielle-Biarrey from a clearance kick by Russell, only for the ball to bobble into touch.

The defining moment came in the 69th minute, when Ben Tameifuna powered over for a try, just moments after Gaëtan Barlot had been denied a score for losing control and Bath had lost Charlie Ewels to the sin-bin, to take the game beyond two scores. Temo Matiu extended the lead before Tom Carr-Smith claimed a consolation try at the death.

Bordeaux, as they did to Northampton last year, have laid down a marker for Bath who look the best-equipped English side, given the salary cap restrictions, to challenge the top French sides and Leinster.

“If you come here, you know you’ve got your hands full,” said Van Graan. “They’ve got some of the best players on the planet in their team. They are one of the great teams and that is where we want to get to.

“Will we learn from it? Yes, we learn every single week and every single season, but one season, it’s got nothing to do with the other one. We had an opportunity today to get into a final, this was the first for us as a group in 20 years,

“We’ll look at that, at that game back with a smile and a sense that we gave it all we got, and we came up just short from our side.”

Match details

Scoring sequence: 5-0 Gazzotti try, 7-0 Lucu con, 7-5 Muir try, 7-7 Russell con, 12-7 Bielle-Biarrey try, 14-7 Lucu con, 14-12 Muir try, 19-12 Lucu try, 21-12 Lucu con, 24-14 Lucu pen, 21-17 Hennessey try, 24-19 Russell con, 29-19 Tameifuna try, 31-19 Lucu con, 36-19 Matiu try, 38-19 Lucu con, 38-24 Carr-Smith try, 38-26 Russell con.

Bordeaux-Begles: S Rayasi (H Reus 74); P Uberti (A Retiere 60), D Penaud, Y Moefana, L Bielle-Biarrey; M Jalibert, M Lucu; M Perchaud (U Boniface 60), Gaetan Barlot (M Lamothe 60), C Sadie (B Tameifuna 51), Boris Palu (C Cazeaux 51), Adam Coleman, Pierre Bochaton (B Vergnes-Taillefer 69), Cameron Woki, Marko Gazzotti (T Matiu 51).

Bath: S Carreras; H Arundell, Louie Hennessey, Ollie Lawrence, Will Muir (T de Glanville 65); F Russell, B Spencer (T Carr-Smith 75); B Obano (F van Wyk 53), T Dunn (K Tuipulotu 44), T du Toit (B Sela 73), Q Roux (T Hill 54), C Ewels, J Bayliss, G Pepper (S Underhill 54), A Barbeary (M Reid 54).
Sin-bin: Ewels.

Referee: N Amashukeli (GRFU).