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L. Doyhenard (5'), Y. Tapie (41'), M. Acebes (45')
Tries
J. Matthews (24', 50')
T. Dolhagara (5')
Conversions
E. Herve (24', 51')
T. Dolhagara (36', 45')
Penalties
E. Herve (18'), D. Papunashvili (38')
We don’t yet have the full phase-by-phase picture, but the shape of this one is clear enough. Biarritz shaded a tight meeting of fourth versus fifth because they were the only team to consistently break the line, and they owned the better scrum when it mattered. Montauban stayed in it through their maul and a tidy lineout, but created almost nothing in the wider channels and spent too long defending inside their half.
Pre-kickoff it looked even, and it played that way. The difference was where each side could find repeatable pressure. Biarritz punched through traffic and then out the edges; Montauban drove straight ahead and hoped for whistle or a collapse. One of those plans gives you clean breaks and front-foot ball across the park. The other narrows your attack to five-metre zones.
The numbers back it. Biarritz had six clean breaks to Montauban’s none and carried more often; they also forced the visitors to make 90-plus tackles. Montauban’s set-piece split was telling — 83% lineout and two tries for Johnny Matthews points to a dependable maul, but 50% at scrum time surrendered platform and pressure when they needed it most.
CARRIES
CLEAN BREAKS
TACKLE
TACKLES MISSED
TURNOVERS WON
PENALTIES CONCEDED
YELLOW CARDS
POSSESSION
SCRUMS
LINEOUTS
Where it turned was straight after the interval. Biarritz emerged with tempo and won territory quickly, and their wings cashed in. Yohan Tapie struck first, and within minutes Mathieu Acebes finished another for what became the decisive buffer. Those scores weren’t flukes; they were the logical end of a first hour in which Biarritz repeatedly won the gain line through their heavy carriers and played on top of a backpedalling defence.
That blueprint had clear authors. Sione Vailanu gave them a true go-forward anchor with nine carries and 67 metres, denting the line and dragging green shirts into folded edges. Yann Lesgourgues picked his moments, sniping for 46 metres and keeping the ruck speed high enough to stress Montauban’s guard defenders. With that platform, Biarritz could hit width decisively: Acebes was sharp with ball in hand, Tapie found a seam, and Thomas Dolhagara steered the middle third, taking two penalties when field position merited points.
Montauban’s answer, again, was their maul. Matthews’ brace said plenty about their best weapon, and Enzo Hervé kept them in touch off the tee. After Kakhaber Darbaidze’s yellow card, they got the one score they needed to make the final half-hour a contest, but once Biarritz returned to fifteen, Montauban lacked a non-maul route to stress the defence. Zero clean breaks tells its own story. They carried willingly — Christopher Vaotoa in particular — and Dachi Papunashvili offered yards from the backfield, but very little of it bent Biarritz out of shape between the 22s.
There’s credit due to Biarritz’s defence in that passage. They didn’t overfold against the maul after the second concession, they tightened their spacing, and they were disciplined enough in the red zone to force Montauban to play away from their sweet spot. The breakdown was a wash (turnovers six apiece), so the decisive defensive work was structure and collision quality rather than jackal heroics.
It wasn’t perfect from the home side. The lineout was flaky at 57% and will be circled in red on Monday; that is too low for a team with play-off ambitions. They also left points out wide with only one conversion from three tries. And the yellow on 49 minutes gifted Montauban a lifeline that a more clinical opponent exploits. But this was the third straight game at Aguilera where Biarritz looked comfortable playing either side of the ball — they can score in clusters or shut the door and live off their set-piece and exit game.
For Montauban, there’s no calamity in a narrow defeat away to a top-four side, and their lineout-maul combination remains a bankable source of points. Matthews’ finishing, Hervé’s composure and the work rate out wide from Josua Vici underline that their spine is solid. The concern is the lack of bite in phase play: too many one-out carries, too few connected punches to move a line laterally. When the scrum wobbles and you concede nine penalties, your only attacking fix can’t be “win another throw on the five”.
What does it mean next? Biarritz keep stacking evidence that Aguilera is a hard place to come again — not just because of noise and weather, but because their back five and nine-ten are giving them shape and speed. Tidy the lineout and they’ll spend more time playing in the right parts of the field. Montauban take away a familiar split: good enough to live with the best if they control the set piece, not dangerous enough across the park when they don’t. To climb from the edge of the top five to something sturdier, they need more invention between the tramlines to complement the maul.
