Jim

And if your 10 is trying these little chips, these little flicks, these little short lines, it's very difficult to keep possession for long periods.

The best teams with possession get their 10 on their feet all the time, flicking passes, running the shape and just grinding teams down.

So I think it's really important that when you have a 10 like Xalibert, you need a nine like Lukaku, it's really simple.

and nice and effective.

And I think they play to a certain structure and a certain shape, but they've got so much firepower that they want the game in transition.

They want the game not overly structured.

Like Bath are a team who want the game structured to be able to work their patterns and grind teams down and outwork opposition.

Whereas Bordeaux have just got so much firepower that they can rely on, whether it's forward power or a bit of brilliance,

And they get so many opportunities.

I think it was like 35 defenders beaten yesterday, 18 clean breaks, 18 offloads.

So when you play like that, it's very difficult to say, we have to go pod off nine, pod off 10, find an edge, come back, do the same.

Because they're beating players and making clean breaks and offloads and structure goes out the window whenever you make a clean break and whenever you're in behind defences.

I actually thought Bath had a... It sounds strange, doesn't it?

Because I thought Bath's game plan and execution was actually relatively good.

They sort of limited the transition periods.

I think they won like 13 kicks back from contestable kicks.

So they were good in that area.

But like you boys said, just at that very highest level...

Whereas if you're playing Prem or URC or a lower level in the early rounds, a knock on 35 metres from your own line, you probably think, well, you'll just defend the next phase, win a penalty, kick it back to the corner.

Against this outfit and against the very best, you conceded seven points under your sticks and ultimately that was the difference.