Bath must not waste chance to seal place in Europe’s elite

Not to diminish the achievement of Bath’s Challenge Cup win last season, cruising past Lyon in the final in Cardiff, but winning Europe’s second­-tier competition always felt like a stepping stone towards bigger things, a (successful) trial run before taking a shot at the top prize.

“In these big games we’re just so calm – everything we need is in the team, everything we need is in the circle. It’s empowering,” Beno Obano, Bath’s loosehead prop, said this week. “We’ve played in those games and whatever happens, wherever the chips may fall, we’ll be calm and composed.”

Today, Bath are 80 minutes away from a first true European final since 1998. And all that stands in their way are the most exciting side on the continent, dominating whichever attacking metric you want to choose, featuring a winger referred to jokingly as an alien: the sensational Louis Bielle-Biarrey, with his 29 tries in 27 Tests for France.

Facing Bordeaux-Bègles, the defending champions, on home turf is a daunting prospect, particularly when your talismanic scrum-half, Ben Spencer, was rated as “50-50” to play as recently as Wednesday. But these are the daunting days that Bath have yearned for. That they dreamed about when the club seemed to shuffle from one failing regime to the next in search of a return to the glory days, the club with the best training facilities in the country coming perilously close to relegation (had there been an eligible team ready to come up) only four years ago. Even if Spencer was “40-60” at best, there was no way the England scrum-half was missing this one. Whereas the absence of Jefferson Poirot, Bordeaux-Bègles’ best loosehead prop, and the selection of world-leading tighthead Thomas du Toit by Bath gives the English champions an opening.

The prize for today’s winners will be to take on Leinster, who now have the chance to shake off their European hoodoo, one of the more painful runs of failure in successive finals since the ill-fated Buffalo Bills lost four consecutive Super Bowls. After three final defeats in a row from 2022, Leinster will return to Bilbao, the scene of their last title in 2018, after beating Toulon 29-25 in Dublin yesterday.

Leinster have been too good, for too long, to wait eight years to add a fifth star to their shirt. But is this the season? With injuries to key forwards, chopping and changing at No 10 in search of a long-term solution – a war which Harry Byrne seems to have won over Sam Prendergast – it has not been the precise, crisp Leinster of old, yet here they were with another shot, having had their soul ripped out by Northampton this time last year.

Eleven years have past since Toulon were last in the final four of Europe’s top competition, when, of course, they faced Leinster, except on that occasion in raucous Marseille, the grand finale of what turned out to be the peak of the Mourad Boudjellal spending era, a final European crown for a whole host of galáticos.

This version of Toulon, a decade later, are markedly different. Still fuelled by English talent – David Ribbans, Kyle Sinckler, Lewis Ludlam, Zach Mercer – but with less of the star power. Well, aside from 43-year-old former All Black Ma’a Nonu. This is a physical group, with that quality embodied in their 19-year-old Georgian back row Mikheil Shioshvili, propelled forwards by a metronomic goalkicker in Melvyn Jaminet. There is still some stardust here; it’s just not as obvious as the gathering of icons over a decade ago.

As the contest in Dublin played out, the only question was whether Leinster could get out of their own way and seal the deal. Josh van der Flier’s try off a well-worked tap penalty was cute. And a close-range try from Caelan Doris to put Leinster 29-11 up with 14 minutes left was enough to make them feel comfortable.

Still, there were jittery moments. Setariki Tuicuvu’s try right before half-time, minutes after the home side lost Andrew Porter and Harry Byrne to yellow cards, gave Leinster serious cause for concern. Then Gaël Dréan’s try with only five minutes left, just as Leinster must have thought they were home and dry, sent heart-rates soaring once more. Surely this was not happening again.

Had Dréan been able to find Tuicuvu with a late offload after breaking up the right touchline, flinging a pass infield, then it could have spelled disaster. There was no harrowing heartbreak this time. Leinster will get their shot at the title.

They will now await today’s winner in Bilbao. Bordeaux-Bègles want to reaffirm that this is their era. And Bath? Being back in the pinnacle of European club finals, after years of mediocrity, would confirm that the dark days are long behind them.

If today’s semi-final is where the Dragons’ journey in Europe comes to a close, then it has been some ride. A welcome burst of optimism in Welsh rugby cutting through the off-field rancour, with the number of regional teams in Wales still in doubt beyond next season and the future of Ospreys still uncertain.

Well done if you predicted that it would be Newport’s finest out of the four Welsh teams smashing unwelcome records this season. A decade has passed since a Welsh region last reached the semi-finals of either the Champions or Challenge Cup. The Dragons have also defeated Zebre in Parma twice this season, with last weekend’s win their first away from home in the United Rugby Championship in four years. It has been a ground-breaking campaign. And now the Dragons will bid to face Ulster in the final in three weeks, following their win over Exeter Chiefs in Belfast yesterday in the other semi-final.

“I’ve heard that fans from the Ospreys, Cardiff and Scarlets are wishing Dragons all the best,” their coach, Filo Tiatia, said this week. “I think that’s great. It’s great being in a semi-final, a team from Wales, and there’s certainly a lot of talent here, and not just our club, but with the four regions.” The Dragons have won in France already this season, stunning Stade Français in Paris. However, toppling Montpellier would go down as one of the greatest results in their history, giving players such as Aaron Wainwright, who is leaving for Leicester Tigers at the end of the season, the opportunity to bow out on the highest of highs by lifting some elusive silverware.

Success in the Challenge Cup for Exeter Chiefs, on the other hand, would have felt like a bonus in a resurgent season, after the Devon club slumped to a ninth-place finish, their worst-ever performance in the Prem last year. Dave Walder’s arrival to mastermind the attack has resuscitated Exeter with ball in hand – who saw this high-quality season coming from club stalwart Harvey Skinner at fly-half? – and their coaching and recruitment work deserves a lot of credit. And it helps to have, in Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, one of the most electric attackers in the country.

Exeter could not contain Ulster’s power in Belfast, as the Ulster No 8, Juarno Augustus, set the tone with his physical carrying. Exeter had their chances and failed to take them. Painful lessons which will hurt them now, while no doubt helping them as they focus on making the Prem play-offs.

Photograph by David Rogers/Getty Images