England and Toulouse flanker Jack Willis was bitterly disappointed at how things unfolded on Sunday as Champions Toulouse found themselves booted out of the Investec Champions Cup.<\/b><\/p>\n
It was a brutal display from Bordeaux Begles, who ran out 35-18 victors over their fellow Top 14 club, courtesy of tries from Pete Samu, Louis Bielle-Biarrey (2), Pierre Bochaton and Ben Tameifuna.<\/p>\n
Tough one to take<\/p>\n
The result sets up a finale between Bordeaux<\/a> and Premiership outfit Northampton Saints, who stunned Leinster in Saturday\u2019s semi-final.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cYeah, it was a bit of a gut punch,\u201d Willis<\/a> commented after the match.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a tough one to take, but Bordeaux played really well and dominated us around the ruck area, which hurts.<\/p>\n \u201cThey kicked brilliantly and put themselves in some great positions with clever field kicks and then applied pressure after that, and we struggled to get a proper footing as a result.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd, one thing that didn\u2019t help was the try directly after half-time. We spoke about exactly this at the break, knowing we were still in the game, and to retain focus- so to then concede directly at the beginning of the second half is certainly not ideal- although even by saying that we had ample opportunity to get ourselves back into a position.<\/p>\n British and Irish Lions \u2018can\u2019t afford\u2019 to snub Jack Willis as France star hails \u2018amazing\u2019 Toulouse duo<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Bordeaux star \u2018not a surprise\u2019 by \u2018amazing\u2019 Northampton and reveals crucial area of \u2018dominance\u2019 against Toulouse<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Toulouse player ratings v Bordeaux: Enforcer \u2018bottled up and too easily contained\u2019 but he wasn\u2019t alone in being \u2018well below par\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n No excuse and Lions\u2019 hopes<\/p>\n Toulouse were without their inspirational skipper Antoine Dupont for the fixture, with deadly accurate placekicker and full-back Thomas Ramos also sidelined. The in-form Blair Kinghorn was also sidelined for the match, but Willis says that while the injuries hurt the title holders, they were not using it as an excuse.<\/p>\n \u201cLast year was incredible, but that was last year. It\u2019s not this year and we had an opportunity today to go and put ourselves in the final, and we didn\u2019t pull through. So let\u2019s have a look at what went wrong and see what we can do for the rest of the rest of season,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n \u201cI know we were missing players but I don\u2019t think we want to sit behind excuses. Every team has injuries, and yes, we\u2019ve had some pretty special players go down, but we had a team today that could have come out of this match on the right side and we had confidence that we could.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, we didn\u2019t deliver as a group, and that\u2019s where we\u2019re at.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it changes in terms of us wanting to go after the Top 14. We\u2019re in a good position in the league at the moment, but you\u2019ve got two options, really, after a loss like this. You can sort of fold over and just trickle into the end of the season, or you can rally together and go after one more competition that we\u2019re still in, and that\u2019s definitely the mentality that we\u2019ll be trying to apply.\u201d<\/p>\n