Penaud leads brilliant Bordeaux in 11-try Champions Cup humiliation of Exeter
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The gulf between the top French sides and the Premiership’s lower reaches grows wider by the week. First Toulouse and now Bordeaux have travelled to Exeter this season and been so markedly superior that a boxing referee would have stopped the fight long before the end. This was not even the visitors’ strongest team and it still resulted in a one-sided mismatch.
![[Substitute Louis Bielle-Biarrey runs in his second try]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6c320cff1bb88992eaa6c5a63ed193a049ab1527/0_264_4315_2589/master/4315.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
There was never much chance of this rebuilding Chiefs squad punching above its weight in this season’s Champions Cup anyway but they were an embarrassingly distant second here against opponents who exuded attacking class all day and could easily go deep in the competition if their key men stay fit and the Six Nations does not rob them of their current momentum.
Maxime Lucu cannot even make France’s best XV when the peerless Antoine Dupont is around but the scrum-half was outstanding here, scoring a brace of tries himself and astutely pulling all the right levers to punish Exeter’s assorted shortcomings. While the Chiefs were good enough to see off Gloucester in their last home outing these opponents were several cuts above.
It does not necessarily follow that France will be equally dominant in the looming Six Nations but there can be no disputing the pedigree of players such as Damian Penaud – who helped himself to a hat-trick of tries – Mathieu Jalibert and Louis Bielle-Biarrey when they have plentiful turnover ball upon which to feast. At some stage, even so, English rugby has to confront the glaringly obvious: mediocre Premiership sides are currently no match for the Top 14’s bigger beasts.
