Bordeaux-Begles head coach Yannick Bru announced on Friday that star winger Louis Bielle-Biarrey, despite suffering a concussion, has experienced a “spectacular change” in his symptoms and is now cleared to feature in this weekend’s French Top 14 final against Toulouse.
Bielle-Biarrey, who has scored 33 tries for club and country this season, had been sidelined since June 7 due to a head injury.
Following last week’s semi-final victory over Toulon, Bru had initially ruled the 22-year-old out of Saturday’s championship decider in Paris. However, Bielle-Biarrey participated fully in team training at the Stade de France on Friday.
“At the start of this week, he met a lot of specialists; he scored 10/10 in his neurological tests,” Bru told reporters. He added that when asked if he wanted to play, Bielle-Biarrey firmly responded, “It’s out of the question that I don’t play the final with my mates.” Bru, a former French hooker, described the recovery as a “spectacular change.”
In an impressive season, Bielle-Biarrey scored his 13th league try earlier this month, making him the Top 14’s leading scorer.
He is expected to start on the wing, playing alongside fellow 22-year-old centre Nicolas Depoortere.
Depoortere acknowledged the difficulty of missing games like a semi-final but expressed relief that Bielle-Biarrey was back for the final, calling the presence of the Top 14’s top scorer “a plus.”
Bielle-Biarrey has failed to score in only two of his last 16 appearances and played a crucial role in France’s Six Nations success earlier this year.
Toulouse head coach Ugo Mola praised him, stating, “He’s a player that walks on water… He’s explosive; he is incredibly efficient… He’s an extra strength for Bordeaux-Begles.”
This weekend’s final is a rematch of last June’s decider, where Bordeaux-Begles suffered a record 59-3 defeat to Mola’s Toulouse.
However, Bru’s side has since beaten the 23-time French champions in their last three encounters. Despite this history, Bru insisted his team is not focused on “revenge.” “That means stiffness, anger, things that blind you a little bit,” he explained, emphasising that in the final, it’s crucial to have “your eyes wide open.”
He also dismissed the significance of their Champions Cup victory three weeks prior, stating that it “will stand for nothing” in the context of the Top 14 final.
Bru concluded that achieving the “double” (winning both the Champions Cup and Top 14) would be a “consequence” of their evolution towards greater consistency, akin to Toulouse’s consistent final appearances.
