Bordeaux-Gloucester thriller shows why the Champions Cup needs full-strength teams and fierce contests

The Champions Cup is at its best when reputation, ambition and a home crowd collide. Bordeaux and Gloucester gave the tournament exactly that in a five-try each, 36-36 opener that felt like a warning to every team planning to travel with a second-choice side.

Bordeaux are the defending champions, and, as they did in the start to their campaign in Pretoria last season, they arrived at Kingsholm with their best team because they understood what awaited them.

Gloucester had finished eighth in the English Premiership last season and slipped into the tournament. But 16,500 people packed the ground, and the Shed roared. Nearly 2,000 supporters filled that beloved working-class end.

Gloucester played with the force of a club and a town determined to make this night count, and Bordeaux would have lost had they not brought their strongest side.

That is the romance of this competition. It is the best clubs in France, England and the United Rugby Championship (URC) being forced to prove themselves in places where the home team, the crowd and the occasion can turn a match into something much bigger than a fixture.

Unbeaten run

Gloucester were not interested in Bordeaux’s title or their unbeaten run — now stretching into a third successive season in the tournament. They attacked the champions and scored five tries.

Bordeaux needed two of their best, France wing Louis Bielle-Biarrey and captain Maxime Lucu, to combine and level the scores in the final quarter. Bielle-Biarrey marked his 100th club appearance with a try.

The visitors will feel they were denied the win. Bordeaux had two successive scrums, both 25m from Gloucester’s posts and directly in front of them in the last minute.

No penalty came, despite Bordeaux’s scrum dominance. Lucu, who started at flyhalf and finished at scrumhalf, would have popped the penalty over.

The try-scoring bonus-point tournament changes — which means a team must score three tries more than the opposition — also added to the intensity of the contest. Neither team could play for four tries and be guaranteed a bonus point.

Balancing two competitions

The contrast with Friday’s opening day in South Africa was sharp. Stade Français and Bristol sent weakened, youthful 23s to face the Bulls and Stormers in Pretoria and Cape Town.

Those choices may reflect the strain of balancing two competitions and the importance clubs place on their domestic campaigns. But they also diminish the contest supporters have paid to see.

Winning at home is close to non-negotiable in this tournament. The teams that have won the tournament get this.

Strong away performances build the position that earns a home play-off. Get to the final with home advantage, and in this competition you are there 90% of the time. Second-string teams rarely create that path.

South African supporters are still struggling to fall in love with a competition whose rhythm is difficult to appreciate.

The group rounds are spread across seven months: four matches, then the last 16, quarterfinals and semifinals before the finals weekend in Lyon on May 22 and 23.

The stop-start calendar sits alongside domestic rugby and local derbies that carry their own weight.

Spectacular Saturday

The crowds tell their own story. More than 43,000 were at Cape Town Stadium for the Stormers-Sharks clash a week earlier. More than 30,000 watched Bulls-Lions in Pretoria. It made for a spectacular Saturday. A week later, attendance at both grounds was down 60% for Champions Cup rugby.

That gap will narrow if a South African side goes deep. Stormers coach John Dobson is right: local supporters need a local team to reach the play-offs, make a final and win the title.

But the tournament also needs to give them a reason to care before the knockouts. Strength against strength is that reason.

The Champions Cup is the best club competition in the world because it brings the top eight from the Top 14, Premiership and URC into one contest.

Its opening match showed what that promise looks like: five tries apiece, a packed Shed, champions pushed to the edge and no safe night for the visitors.

That is the competition South Africa should want to win.