Penaud leads brilliant Bordeaux in 11-try Champions Cup humiliation of Exeter

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.

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.

Exeter’s first-half highlights reel pretty much started and finished with Paul Brown-Bampoe’s spectacular seventh-minute try from almost 95 metres out. The wing, last seen turning out for Plymouth Albion against Dings Crusaders before Christmas, owed his selection to a serious knee injury to Olly Woodburn and Josh Hodge’s broken hand but there was no doubting the pace and quality of his dramatic sprint up the full length of the touchline in front of the main stand.

It was a rare early moment of Chiefs quality with a few too many tackles giving Bordeaux the chance to show their own finishing ability. Lucu scored the first and was heavily involved in the second, looping around Jalibert and feeding Romain Buros who put a strolling Penaud over with just 14 minutes gone.

Substitute Louis Bielle-Biarrey runs in his second try. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Despite the premature loss of the dangerous Buros with an ankle strain there was a good deal more casual backline brilliance to come. On the half hour they swept right again and this time it was Penaud who turned provider, cutting expertly inside before giving the supporting Lucu a straightforward jog to the line.

A measure of their superiority was the ability still in reserve with the brilliant young Louis Bielle-Biarrey appearing off the bench to inflict further languid damage. When the mood takes them Bordeaux can be every bit as dangerous as Toulouse with ball in hand and ease with which the visitors then added a fifth try in injury time before the interval was similarly ominous.

So it proved. Jalibert created a sumptuous score for Bielle-Biarrey and Penaud would have claimed a sumptuous hat-trick even earlier had he not thrown the ball away with no defender in sight and invited the fleet-footed Jalibert to score instead. Exeter were being toyed with, never a happy experience for a home side or their supporters.

With fatigue kicking in as well, the only remaining question was whether Bordeaux could outdo Toulouse’s 64-21 victory in Devon last month even after the red carding of replacement prop Toma Taufa for a misjudged high challenge on Ben Hammersley. A second try for the energetic Brown-Bampoe and a third for Hammersley did briefly delay that final indignity but, with 172 points conceded in just three pool games, this continues to be a sobering season out west.