Well beaten, saturated and badly treated by gameÕs power-brokers

Biarritz 17Connacht 0

Rob Murphy at Parc  des Sports Aquilera

A try with the last play of the game on Saturday night might have put a bit of a gloss on the scoreline, but Biarritz were well worth their win in the Basque country in a fixture that was a farce of a contest from the very moment referee Leighton Hodges allowed it to kick off on a saturated pitch.

Everyone felt a little shortchanged in Biarritz late Friday night. At home and in the stands, basically everyone outside of the establishment that run European rugby, the ERC and Sky television, felt as though they had been caught by a hidden charge.

This wasn't a meaningful game in anyway. Drawing conclusions is difficult, Biarritz won and that's that. Connacht can take positives away from the contest and they can be criticised for their game plan too. Yet the rugby supporters home and in situ, the people who are essential to the product of professional rugby, were really treated like fools.

This game went ahead in conditions that no rugby match should be played. Surface water in five areas of the pitch. Rucks developed in those ponds on numerous occasions during the contest and referee Hodges let play go on.

We didn't get a chance to ask any of the decision makers, whether they felt such a situation risks players safety but it's legitimate to query as much when you watch a scenario like the one where Aled Brew, the Biarritz left winger, collected possession in a puddle, got tackled and found himself at the bottom of a pile of bodies with the very real risk of been submerged.

The whole event was a damning indictment of where priorities lie in the professional game today. Both sides made the best of it and the contest was aggressive, edgy and at, times, heated, especially in the first half as a home side, looking to put a week of upheaval behind them, went toe to toe with the side that humbled them seven days earlier.

The key score of the contest came with ten minutes to go in the first half when Ian Balshaw finished off a sweeping first phase move from a scrum on the ten metre line where a miss read in defence by Dan Parks was to prove crucial.

It was 10-0 at half time and remained that way right up to the last minute of play when Borutu rubbed salt in Connacht wounds with a second try. In fairness, to the home side, they had been over the line three times in the game and not scored so, maybe, 17-0 was a fair reflection.

‘A fair reflection of what?’ is the real question though, as this didn't feel like a legitimate contest. Connacht came in as 15 point underdogs and while there was plenty of signs that this team continues to thrive, you couldn't say they would have won this on a dry day either.

Biarritz were better in the return leg. Dimitri Yachvili was at his vintage best. In fact, it's hard to remember a more complete and all encompassing performance by one man against a Connacht side in recent years.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.