The light goes out on the Saracen Dynasty. Here, a little early raged against it, a little bloodshed given the concerted dominance of a Bordeaux team that emphasized its title recognition, but the journey is almost over for what was one of the great national teams not so long ago.of modern times.

Bordeaux smack Saracens, then spread their wings, Louis Bielle-Biarrey scored twice and rubbed his opponents’ faces. The fact that Alex Goode waited for the clock to turn red before making his conversion to gone made everyone understand that Saracens only wanted to be saved from their misery.

For Bordeaux, it was a great performance that the harlequins, whom they will meet in the quarter-finals, will have watched from behind the sofa. Not only did they throw out the triple Champions, but they also highlighted the considerable gap in the class in the middle of the best of the best on both sides of the chain.

Owen Farrell was absent with a hamstring health issue, but was present at the Chaban – Delmas Stadium-a penny for his thoughts as his Champions Cup Commitment with Saracens ended disappointingly. Truth be told, there was not much he could have done on the field, but his actioning spirit is so great that he would have desperately tried to be in the middle of it all and action the tide.

He is not the only club to move on this summer, the Vunipola brothers also seem to have left, and Mark McCall has repeatedly said this Season that it is time to freshen up. Perhaps the best way to describe this defeat is the perfect proof of why. Saracens are an aging team in need of a makeover. They met a Bordeaux team who also lacked their talismanic fly half in Matthieu Jalibert, but who had too much strength and skill for their opponents, even with five attempts denied in the first half.

They finally finished at six and let their fans rave in this delicious relic of a stadium in the middle of Bordeaux. He turned 100 last month and the Bordeaux faithful are obviously still celebrating because he has always trembled to the core.

Credit Saracens for their defensive resilience in the first half, credit Theo McFarland for the way he dug in, but Bordeaux were so superior that Saracens offered almost nothing in action in the first half and not much in the second.

In all honesty, it must be said that they had come more in Hope than in expectation. I hope that the last chapter of this contest has not yet been written. Farrell’s absence was an obvious setback, but Jalibert is just as important for Bordeaux and although they sometimes seemed to practice a very different sport during their 55-15 stage victory in the pool against Saracens in January, we suspected that they had slipped out of the kitchen.

The way they started refuted this theory. Maxime Lucu strike through a gap on Saracens ’22 and competed for Bielle-Biarrey to take the chase. The French winger got there but could not quite anchor the ball and the Saracens had a pardon. They had a lot more in the first half. Bordeaux’s ferocious counter-actioning play made Saracens all the more difficult to get, but with the flying skills of McFarland and after 50-22 from Alex Lewington, they took advantage of a rare foray into their opponents’ 22 and might have scored the first try if Goode’s clever cultivator had stood up