LOU Rugby

the ability of anyone to beat anyone on their day and that kind of thing.

A couple of real statement away performances, I guess, notably from Bordeaux and Lyon getting an amazing win against Bayon at Stade Jean-Doger, who'd been in great shape.

Van sort of stopping the rot, I guess, a little bit.

Montpellier continuing away from home as well.

I was trying to think of a neat segue.

Speaking of hymns, iconic pre-match chants, Stagion d'Auger.

Not much from Fortress last season as we laboured on, but by honour, been playing some great rugby and a huge result for Lyon on the road.

who have had, even by kind of Lyon standards, a fairly unusual start to the season.

The current table as it stands, we've got Toulouse only with the one loss at 28 points.

We've got Bordeaux in second place, Poe third, La Rochelle fourth, and Lyon second.

at 5th place and Bayon tying up the finals positions to top 6 in the top 14 still pretty early for the 7th and 8th spot for qualifications for European Cup as and I spoke about it already Van is still at the bottom here though with that win racing 92 I don't know why I literally read that.

Rossi, a 13th spot.

I think as someone that's not played second row or not, I technically played hooker, but I think we're seeing the importance of second row combinations for a scrum, because those two front rows, yes, Hung Patan is brilliant, but Akrab is a young guy, and yet you've got an all-England international.

One of them is a recent Lions tighthead, and they were getting dusted.

But I do wonder if the slightly lighter second rows for Bath... had an impact and like you know we saw it with Big Ben like two actual specialist second rows for Gloucester and Gloucester went to town on that Bordeaux scrum which is a you know again an all international front row for Bordeaux so yeah I'm intrigued to if anyone's got any thoughts on the scrummaging combinations I think maybe of second rows might be the big thing yeah

No, don't disagree with that.

You mentioned it wasn't on TV.

Now, I don't know the ins and outs of how Canal Plus' numbering system works, but we were both surprised, slash not surprised, but miffed that the Premier Sports game was Lyon versus La Rochelle when the Rosby's derby could have been won or... you know, the potential relegation six-pointer USAP versus Van wasn't one.

I'm pretty sure on the live bit, because obviously that was all a multiplex, so it's kind of all on the same time and you can watch it on the multiplex view, but Canal Plus 2 was the Van v.

La Roche airport van the usap game i think canal plus three was the poe uh cast game the canal plus four was the toulon of the wrestling game and number five so the the highest number therefore presumably the crappiest channel was leon versus larochelle i think you know so that proves to me i think that it's someone at premiere sports really bloody loves leon is in the pocket of leon

Not just him, but a few others.

Like Beard.

I think fundamentally, it's very, very difficult to know What's going to happen? I remember last year thinking Lyon looked great and they lost both their home games in front of about 11 people at the Giron.

I think we made them favourites.

And then you see the pre-season performances.

The lads went away to Lyon, quite a stacked Lyon team and did very well.

they beat Zebrae well here and then over in South Africa I thought they were brilliant so like it was kind of a bit of a okay let's go like as in all the lads who have been behind who weren't an international camper really opened their game here so we've got to do the same learn to kind of just take a week by week because yeah like it all it was looking pretty doom and gloom on stage last year and then it's looking good and we win the URC so it's just kind of taking a week by week

Up in Belfast, there was nothing to separate the sides in the first URC InterPro of the new season, so Munster took the lead through Alex Kindelen after 10 minutes, and although Ulster responded through Jacob Stockdale a few minutes after, another try from Kindelen and scores from player of the match Marnus van der Merwe and Dan Kelly helped the visitors into a 26-5 lead by half-time.

A team that really made a statement was Bordeaux-Begle.

Bordeaux-Begle, 51 points, Lyon, 28 points.

That was another massive result for Bordeaux-Begle.

Yeah, it was a great, a good result against a Lyon side who started the season pretty well, but beginning to slip off the pace a little bit now.

And again, at home in Stade Chabon-Delmasque, you expect Bordeaux-Bergler to win their matches.

And again, they scored eight tries against Lyon's four.

And it was all the usual suspects who got on the score sheets.

Deportier, Wocky, Bierbach, Tom Willis...