{"id":125763,"date":"2025-05-23T16:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T16:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/125763\/"},"modified":"2025-05-23T16:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T16:57:08","slug":"former-france-star-kayser-issues-warning-over-mathieu-jalibert-planet-rugby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/125763\/","title":{"rendered":"Former France star Kayser issues warning over Mathieu Jalibert : Planet Rugby"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Fin Smith last played against Matthieu Jalibert, there was only one winner. England beat France, Smith was man of the match, and Jalibert was sent back to his club.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Smith made his first Test start that day at Twickenham. He has been England\u2019s fly-half ever since, they have won all their games, and he is now a British & Irish Lion.<\/p>\n

In the same period, Jalibert, 26, has been a stranger to the international stage. Yet he might well argue that February afternoon in the Six Nations had as galvanising an effect on him as it did his English counterpart.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s not one element where Matthieu is not involved. Ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

In nine club games, Jalibert has scored 74 points, Union Bordeaux B\u00e8gles have reached their first Investec Champions Cup Final, and the 26-year-old has been in the form of his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cTap into your search engine, \u2018highlights, Bordeaux\u2019,\u201d says Benjamin Kayser<\/a>, former France hooker turned Premier Sports pundit. \u201cUBB are one of the best attacking sides in Europe, and there\u2019s not one element where Matthieu is not involved. Ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s either the final pass, he makes a 20-metre break, or he is creating something; foot, hand, step, whatever you want. Always involved. For the last three months, he\u2019s been the talisman of this team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which brings us nicely to the biggest club game of the season, Northampton Saints against Union Bordeaux B\u00e8gles and an eagerly awaited rematch between the playmaking pair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Fin Smith. I think he\u2019s a great player,\u201d says Kayser. \u201cI\u2019m really, really impressed with how well he can dictate the tempo of a game. But one-on-one, he will not make as much difference as Jalibert<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Okay, let\u2019s rewind a bit. To 2018 when Jalibert made his France debut as a teenager after just 15 league appearances for UBB. To 2020, when he caught the eye at Twickenham in a second or even third-string France side that gave England the fright of their lives in the final of the short-lived Autumn Nations Cup.<\/p>\n

Impressive stuff, yet recency bias means most non-Top 14 observers, when asked for their opinion of Jalibert, default to this year\u2019s Le Crunch clash. You remember the one: France somehow contrived to lose a game they would have won by half-time had they not dropped everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was a calamitous team performance, and it coincided with Jalibert, who had controversially left the France squad in the autumn rather than warm the replacements\u2019 bench against New Zealand, getting a rare start due to Romain Ntamack\u2019s red card against Wales the previous week.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was his big game and he messed up,\u201d says Kayser. \u201cThere was all this press about [Fabian] Galthie giving him a big hug and saying \u2018we\u2019re done, no more arguing between us. Now it\u2019s your time to shine.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

Champions Cup final teams: England stars return for Northampton but Springboks hopeful misses out while Damian Penaud starts for Bordeaux<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was his moment and, genuinely, his defence cost us the game and a couple of decisions weren\u2019t really there. He missed that opportunity and Fin Smith seized it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Viewed through that prism, tomorrow\u2019s Principality Stadium clash, between two clubs who were given little chance of advancing from their semi-finals, is one Saints fans should be excited about. Only, Kayser has a warning.<\/p>\n

\u201cMind-blowingly good\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in the UK judge Jalibert\u00a0<\/b>by his international performances, which is fair, because you follow Top-14 a little bit less,\u201d he says. \u201cBut anybody who has followed him closely since he burst onto the scene four or five years ago will know he\u2019s been unbelievably good. I mean, mind-blowingly good.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bit like me judging Marcus Smith. International stage? Okay. Premiership? Whoa, outstanding. He does stuff that leaves you saying, \u2018this guy is an absolute genius\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cJalibert is the same. He\u2019s never been totally able to dominate the international stage because of the Romain Ntamack shadow \u2013 Ntamack likes to play with Antoine Dupont and vice versa.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd because Galthie has a real sweet spot for that duo, it\u2019s hard to go and perform somewhere where you don\u2019t feel you\u2019re totally the number one choice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut he is definitely the number one choice in Bordeaux. Guys love him. [Scrum-half] Maxime Lucu is a great complement to him, but also his team allows him to be the maverick that he is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI promise you, for the last three months Jalibert has been unbelievable. Semi-final against Toulouse, outstanding. Last week against Castres, outstanding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay, he does not defend like Owen Farrell, like Jonny Wilkinson in the good old days, or like Romain Ntamack. But in attack, unbelievable. His head-to-head against Fin Smith is a bit unfair, because it\u2019s not really a head-to-head. They\u2019re very different players, and it\u2019s going to be a very different way of judging them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, certainly, he\u2019s a player for the big games. He\u2019s been delivering in the big games and I think he\u2019s very up for this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

An obvious question is whether one, or both, of these sides has already played its final. Saints beating Leinster in Dublin was one for the ages, Bordeaux trouncing Toulouse at their Matmut Atlantique stadium, not far behind.<\/p>\n

Maxime Lucu reveals the Northampton player who Bordeaux-Begles want to \u2018neutralise\u2019 in Champions Cup final<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

It is entirely possible neither will be able to get back to those heights, both emotionally and physically. In Bordeaux\u2019s case they had the memory of being routed 59-3 by Toulouse in last season\u2019s Top-14 Final to fire them. They have no such lever to pull this time.<\/p>\n

Northampton are back at full strength, with England fullback George Furbank making his first start since April and all four injury worries from last weekend passed fit. But, for them, the element of surprise has gone.<\/p>\n

Kayser feels it is almost impossible to call and sides with Bordeaux on the grounds that, to his mind, they have an edge in power up front.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what worries me is that Saints, when they go to their behind-the-back balls, like they did against Leinster, they just keep on finding an overlap where you did not see it,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Tommy Freeman against either Louis Bielle-Biarrey or Damian Penaud, up in the air.. I don\u2019t want to see another Six Nations Fin Smith cross-kick to Freeman, on Bielle-Biarrey\u2019s head, back inside and try. It just feels almost too easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back to that Twickenham game again, the one neither Jalibert, Bielle-Biarrey or Penaud care to be reminded of. England\u2019s win that day had Northampton fingerprints all over it. Jalibert, for one, wants to set the record straight.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Kayser is part of the Premier Sports TV team bringing live coverage across the UK of this Saturday\u2019s box office Investec Champions Cup Final with a 10-strong team of rugby\u2019s top presenters. Watch a packed 90-minute build-up from Principality Stadium starting at 1.30pm as Bordeaux B\u00e8gles take on Northampton Saints. Visit\u00a0<\/b>www.premiersports.com<\/b><\/a>\u00a0at just \u00a311.99 a month.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0Northampton v Bordeaux preview: Spicy match-ups as \u2018freak attacking ability\u2019 primed to light up Champions Cup final<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Fin Smith last played against Matthieu Jalibert, there was only one winner. England beat France, Smith was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[55702,2383,2000,299,126,36,225,55703,12,10327,5707],"class_list":{"0":"post-125763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-benjamin-kayser","9":"tag-champions-cup","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-features","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-home-page","15":"tag-matthieu-jalibert","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-northampton-saints","18":"tag-top-14"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114558208952091638","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}