Biarritz vs Sale Preview

Alors!
By Graham Boler
December 11 2003

"Biarritz has a lot more than beautiful buildings to offer today. It's a vibrant cosmopolitan town with magnificent beaches, golf courses and numerous sporting facilities, not forgetting the surf... "

So says the official tour guide web site. Included in the "numerous sporting facilities" are Olympique, one of France's best and proudest rugby clubs.

The current team features well known names from French rugby such as Brusque
Yashvili (very French), Bernat-Salles, but despite the pedigree they lost
heavily to Leinster in the first round of the Heineken Cup this season.
French teams notoriously travel poorly, but Biarritz qualified for the 2nd
stage last year after a massive home win against the other Group 3 members
Cardiff, pipping Sale's opponents Bourgoin on the last day of the round. It
must have been the surf.

So Sale will need to be very wary. The win against Cardiff last week, for
all the excitement of the Web Ellis Cup and the sell-out crowd, was not as
convincing as current form suggested, and though the Redpath-Hodgson axis is
now restored, the pack in particular need to show superior nouse in this
senior competition. The quality of the opponents, the different national
styles and the variations in refereeing interpretations all conspired
against Sale in last year's competition, though the away game at Llanelli
was a fantastic competitive sporting event despite the loss.

Sale lost all the games on the road last year, in their first exposure to
the Heineken Cup. At Glasgow we were terrible, Llanelli good, and at
Bourgoin we just gave up. Sale have also only ever won once in France - at
Narbonne on the road to Parker Pen Shield glory a couple of years ago. So
this is a big task, and a big contingent of fans have taken over Ryanairs
once-a-day flight hopefully to witness history. Game on - surf's up...