Blanco still helps call the shots as Les Biarrots increasingly look to new crop

HEINEKEN CUP FOCUS ON BIARRITZ:ON THE surface, Biarritz are the same as they ever were. Club president Serge Blanco still glowers from the sideline with a hint of menace, as does the inscrutable head coach Jean-Michel Gonzalez. On the pitch, Imanol Harinordoquy leads from the front and Dimitri Yachvili pulls the strings and kicks their goals. Nothing too flashy, but ultra efficient.

Having arm-wrestled their way to victory by 12-11 at the Rec last Sunday, Biarritz host Ulster this Sunday at Parc des Sports Aguilera in the knowledge victory will leave them in the driving seat in Pool Four. With back-to-back games against Aironi in December, they could conceivably go into the January return fixtures against Ulster and Bath with 15 or 16 points in the bank and one foot in the quarter-finals already.

Nothing particularly new there. Biarritz are competing in the Heineken Cup for the 11th successive year. They have reached the quarter-finals on seven occasions, never finishing less than second in their groups, and went on reach the finals of 2006, losing 23-19 to Munster, and last season, when beaten 21-19 by Toulouse.

It is a further measure of the task facing Ulster that in 30 games at the Parc Aguilera, Biarritz have won 28 times and lost only twice, to Bath nine seasons ago and Cardiff two seasons ago. Furthermore, Ulster have never won in a dozen previous attempts in France, drawing once, losing the rest (twice in Biarritz).

All that said and done, money talks in French rugby and the one-time powerhouses of the Top 14 (Les Biarrots won the Bouclier de Brennus in 2002, ’05 and ’06) have had to become more judicious in the transfer market.

Serge Kampf, founder of the club sponsor Capgemini (one of the world’s leading providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services), is still the club’s main backer but there are new, financially more muscular players in the Top 14, notably at Racing Metro and Toulon. Hence their customary place among the elite since the turn of the millennium is under real threat.

The annual rugby budget at Biarritz is €15.39 million, which places them seventh in the Top 14, and that is exactly where they finished last season – their lowest since the current format was introduced. They owe their place in this season’s European Cup to their run to last season’s final.

Following an opening day win over Fabien Galthie’s enterprising Montpellier, who have since become the surprise package of this season’s Top 14, Biarritz suffered three successive defeats, at home to Toulon and away to newly-promoted Agen and Perpignan.

There was talk of tension at the club, and reports that Gonzalez was on the brink of resignation. Things began to turn around with successive home wins, over Stade Francais and Toulouse, victory away to la Rochelle, a bonus point away to Racing and then a crunch win over near neighbours Bayonne (about three miles up the road, and where they lost dismally, 15-0, last season) in the Basque derby coming into Europe.

With some of the established spine on the wane, hooker Benoit August is 33, Jerome Thion has been sidelined with an Achilles tendon injury and Damien Traille made his seasonal reappearance at outhalf (where he could start against Ulster), Biarritz have increasingly looked to a new crop of young players.

One of those, flanker Wenceslas Lauret, was one of the revelations of French rugby last season, starring in the Heineken Cup quarter-final, semi-final and final, and going on the French summer tour to Argentina. Others have broken into the team this season, such as the quick and powerful 21-year-old number eight Raphael Lakafia, thereby converting Harinordoquy to number six. His parents hail from Wallis and Futuna Islands, a Polynesian French island territory in the South Pacific, and his father was a holder of the French javelin record while his mother was a discus thrower.

The 19-year-old outhalf Jean-Pascal Barroque and the 21-year-old centre Charles Gimenez have also broken into the team this season. That said Erik Lund, brother of their flanker Magnus, was bought from Leeds and leads the Top 14 for steals (10) off the opposition throw, has proved a clever acquisition, and with Fabien Barcella injured until March, so too the veteran prop Sylvain Marconnet.

Blanco still bestrides the club like a colossus. It was Blanco who recruited Mathieu Rourre, a coach to the French under-18, under-19 and under-20 sides. It was with Rourre’s in-depth knowledge of the French under-age system that Les Biarrots began supplementing their espoirs with some prized young talent such as French under-age captain Tanguy Molcard, a flanker from Perpignan.

Blanco is at the club every day. As the hands-on figurehead of the club, and given he represented the essence of French flair in his glorious playing career, it is ironic this Biarritz team are content to play such percentage rugby.

Another feature of their recent run has been the way they have dominated second halves, witness loosehead prop Eduard Cotzee sprinting onto a kick ahead in the 80th minute at the Rec. “In terms of fitness, we are at the top of our level,” claimed backs coach John Isaac on Monday. “You cannot question that, because our prop can be seen running like a great sprinter in the 80th minute.”

“It is a habit of this team to finish strongly,” said hooker Romain Terrain. “Even in front of hostile home crowds and with fired-up home teams we know how to stay cool, and we don’t panic and we don’t give up.”