Three decades ago, when they were the most feared club side in the world, B?ers fielded a forward line who would have made the current Leicester pack, Martin Johnson and all, look like the cast of Riverdance. They had Michel Palmie and Alain Est?, Olivier Saisset and Armand Vaquerin and Alain Paco. One French writer went so far as to suggest that Raoul Barri?’s mean-machine champions symbolised the presidency of Valery Giscard-d’Estaing “They were techno years, morose years,” he complained. “We all wanted to be rational, so we abandoned poetry.”

Three decades ago, when they were the most feared club side in the world, B?ers fielded a forward line who would have made the current Leicester pack, Martin Johnson and all, look like the cast of Riverdance. But the game has moved on since the hard men of the Languedoc relinquished their 13-year domination of the French domestic championship – a spectacular run of 10 titles between 1971 and 1984 – and this new vintage, coached by Eric Piazza and captained by the diminutive Pierre Mignoni, play as though they train on a field of aspic.They gave Leicester, the European champions, a severe test at the set-pieces, and for half an hour, they posed a major threat at the line-out. But once S?stien Bruno, their international hooker, left the field with a knee injury, the foundations of their game plan crumbled to dust. The Midlanders scored two fine tries in the final quarter – Oliver Smith, an intriguing contender for a place in England’s 2003 World Cup squad, and Leon Lloyd put the decisive points on the board – and by the end, they had dealt B?ers’ Heineken Cup ambitions a mortal blow.Smith played a blinder at outside centre: the security of his defensive work in the most difficult of positions ensured that Jean-Marc Aue and Jean-Philippe Grand-Claude were about as effective as two wet halibut.

He was also alert enough to put himself on the shoulder of Geordan Murphy – no easy matter, as the entire Leicester club will testify – as the Irish full-back slipped into overdrive in a channel tight to the left touch-line and made the first serious break of a hard, bruising encounter. Murphy’s inside pass was beautifully timed, and Smith crossed unimpeded to open up a 14-9 advantage as the clock ticked past the hour mark.With both Bruno and Thibaut Privat, the Test lock, out of the equation, Leicester proceeded to rule the roost at the line-out through Louis Deacon and the outstanding Martin Corry – a development that cut B?ers’ options by approximately 99 per cent. Any threat posed by the French backs was negligible, and with Fereti Tuilagi causing seven shades of havoc with his big-hit tackling, much of which was as questionable as it was effective, the visitors claimed 10 more points in the closing stages. Lloyd’s try was a gem – driving maul to half-way, inspired cross-kick by Austin Healey, fly-paper catch from Murphy, inside pass to the wing on the inside track – and while Leicester could have used another try in injury time, Rod Kafer’s drop goal was a decent way to round off a fourth successive Heineken triumph on Tricolore territory.B?ers might reasonably have argued that Tuilagi, a Samoan rib-rearranger in the mould of Trevor Leota, should not have been on the pitch in the closing stages, when his menacing presence petrified S?stien Bonetti and Philippe Escalle to such a degree that both threw panic passes directly into touch.

Leicester’s brick outhouse of a wing was sent to the sin-bin after 15 minutes for stiff-arming and punching Mignoni, who might have been reduced to a stretcher case had he been any taller. He then dropped the rather larger Fr?ric Martinez with a forearm smash masquerading as a tackle, but Allan Lewis, the Irish referee, decided against applying the ultimate sanction.As it was, the B?ers players bit their collective lip. “I didn’t see the second tackle,” said Angus Gardiner, the former Bath open-side who crossed the Channel at the start of last season, with a knowing grin. “He came right out of the sun.” Yes, and Martinez went right into outer space.