After Bilbao saw Bordeaux-Begles crowned European champions for the second successive season, it’s time for our Investec Champions Cup Team of the Season.
We’ve selected from across the rounds, taking into account personal performance and result outcomes, and we trust you’ll enjoy our selections.
Bordeaux-Bègles are the first side in the history of the Champions Cup to win back-to-back titles unbeaten. Sixteen pool and knockout matches across two seasons, sixteen wins, two trophies, the second sealed by a 41-21 demolition of Leinster at San Mamés on Saturday afternoon.
Eight UBB men make the Team of the Season in dark blue, three to Toulon, two to Leinster, one each to Bath and Toulouse.
Planet Rugby’s Champions Cup Team of the Season
15 Salesi Rayasi (Union Bordeaux-Bègles): Third top try-scorer in the competition with seven and the back-three constant across UBB’s unbeaten run. Rayasi recovered Lucu’s first sliced clearance of the final at San Mamés and set the platform for the second-half score. He took everything Leinster sent his way under the high ball and made each catch the start of the next Bordeaux attack. The aerial work goes uncelebrated week to week, and it was central to UBB winning the kicking war for eight months straight.
Runners-up: Thomas Ramos (Stade Toulousain), the 50/22 of devastating nonchalance and the cover-nine shift during Dupont’s yellow card at Chaban; Hugo Keenan (Leinster), 9/10 at the quarter-final stage and the best 15 in the north until the final undid him.
14 Gaël Drean (RC Toulon): Finished second in the try-scoring stakes, with eight five-pointers, four of them in the two knockout wins that took Toulon to the quarter-finals. Two against the Stormers at Stade Mayol, two more at Scotstoun a week later in the famous upset of Glasgow. The Tomas Albornoz pass for his second at Mayol was magnificent, thirty-five metres on the angle, and Drean took it at full stride without breaking. One France cap to his name and a year ahead that will probably see many more. Toulon found their next great wing in a season they delivered in Europe.
Runners-up: Pablo Uberti (Union Bordeaux-Bègles), first-phase scrum strike for UBB’s second try in the final; Henry Arundell (Bath Rugby), two tries in the quarter-final at the Rec including the eightieth-minute clincher against Northampton.
13 Nacho Brex (RC Toulon): Player of the Weekend at the Round of 16 and the second-best 13 in the competition on numbers alone. A hundred metres, fifteen tackles and twelve carries against the Stormers at Mayol, before the match-winner at Scotstoun beat Stafford McDowall one-on-one. The hit on Ruhan Nel in the closing stages of the Stormers tie was the moment Toulon’s defensive belief shifted up. Italy’s vice-captain, Argentine by birth, and the man Toulon ran their midfield through for two months.
Runners-up: Damian Penaud (Union Bordeaux-Bègles), sacrificed his wing for the team and scored the kick-and-chase try that broke the final open at the half-hour; Garry Ringrose (Leinster), try scored in his fifth Champions Cup final start.
12 Yoram Moefana (Union Bordeaux-Bègles): The career day was at San Mamés on Saturday and the rest of the campaign built to it. Ninety-seven metres made, the top of the match. Thirteen tackles. Two intercepts, the first of which became his try. The blitz that out-Nienabered Jacques Nienaber ran through Moefana’s channel and was anchored by his timing in the line. He has a case for the man of the match award and the panel went with Lucu only because no panel could pick anyone else.
Runners-up: Fraser Dingwall (Northampton Saints), responded to his England omission with a superb display at The Rec; Stafford McDowall superb v Toulon at Scotstoun with fourteen carries, twelve tackles and a hand in both Glasgow tries against Toulon.
11 Louis Bielle-Biarrey (Union Bordeaux-Bègles): Tournament top try-scorer with 10, including the solo run in the final that left Keenan and Jamison Gibson-Park grabbing at air. The aerial work was the part that did not make the highlight reel; the tap-back to a team-mate rather than the catch into the breakdown won UBB the kicking war for eight months straight. He finished what Jalibert created all year, and at San Mamés he created and finished himself. The player of the tournament and the best winger in the world. Both arguments closed on Saturday, leaving him with more gongs than Neil Peart.
Runners-up: Tommy Freeman (Northampton Saints), 8/10 at the Rec and the best English wing of the comp; Tommy O’Brien (Leinster), clinical try and a superb early turnover in the quarter-final against Sale.
10 Matthieu Jalibert (Union Bordeaux-Bègles): The architect. In the quarter-final against Toulouse he produced twenty-five minutes that turned the match. In the final he created two tries with the kind of distribution that made Antoine Dupont look ordinary in his own shadow, beat four defenders himself and hit a 60-metre touchfinder from a standing catch in his own half. The most complete French fly-half in a generation is now playing the best club rugby of his career.
Runners-up: Finn Russell (Bath Rugby), tournament top points-scorer with 81 and the man who dragged Bath from 21 down at the Rec in one of the great Champions Cup matches; Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu (Stormers), came off the bench at Mayol in the Round-of-16 and reminded everyone he remains in the best-ten-in-the-world conversation, but may rue those last few moments of panic.
9 Maxime Lucu (Union Bordeaux-Bègles): The best scrum-half in the world. The Basque from Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle watched Leinster lift the trophy at San Mamés in 2018 as a fan and returned eight years later as man of the match in his second consecutive Champions Cup final. Nineteen of UBB’s forty-one points off his boot or his hand. The fifty-five-metre penalty in 46-degree pitchside heat. Fourteen tackles. The 65-metre clearances. A defensive turnover, and the first error of the day in the seventy-second minute. The Dupont conversation is over.
Comment: Leinster’s ‘drive for five’ goes wrong as Bordeaux-Bègles prove they are no ‘fleeting star’
Runners-up: Jamison Gibson-Park (Leinster), kicked Leinster’s second half from the wreckage of their first and the second-best scrum-half on the pitch by some distance; Cobus Reinach (Stormers), crisp distribution and competitive bite that nearly stole the famous away win at Mayol against Toulon.
The forwards
8 Alfie Barbeary (Bath Rugby): Player of the Match in the quarter-final that brought Bath back from twenty-one down to beat Northampton 43-41 in one of the great Champions Cup matches. Barbeary off the bench was the catalyst, and his sheer bloody-mindedness pulled Bath out of a hole nobody else could reach into. Steve Borthwick continues to leave him out of England squads, which on this evidence looks like self-harm. Bath went out at the semi-final stage, yet the number eight of the season is the man who turned the tournament into the match of the year and remains in the Test cold.
Runners-up: Caelan Doris (Leinster), the Ireland captain, the 2026 Six Nations Triple Crown skipper and the most credentialled number eight in this XV on body of work alone, omitted by an inch as Barbeary’s quarter-final tipped a finely balanced call; Evan Roos (Stormers), big carrying afternoon at Mayol for the URC’s outstanding number eight of the campaign.
7 Jack Willis (Stade Toulousain): The individual performance of the Champions Cup campaign came in a losing cause at Chaban-Delmas. Willis melted Rayasi with a try-saving hit on the five-metre line after a ninety-metre counter-attack, held up Arthur Retière over the line with Toulouse down to thirteen men, tracked back from a maul break for a covering tackle that single-handedly kept Toulouse in the match and won turnovers at the breakdown all afternoon. He did this in a contest featuring Dupont, Ramos, Jalibert, Romain Ntamack, Bielle-Biarrey and Lucu, and he was the most influential player on the pitch. England’s continued snub looks more baffling with every match.
Runners-up: Rory Darge (Glasgow Warriors), authored 74 cleanouts with the Fagerson brothers in the famous pool stage win over Toulouse; Josh van der Flier (Leinster), fourteen tackles in the final and the only Leinster forward in the top five tacklers in Bilbao.
6 Cameron Woki (Union Bordeaux-Bègles): Broke Leinster’s lineout in the final, held up a Toulouse try in the quarter-final and drew the Dupont yellow card with a powerful maul break at Chaban. Woki has played the season at flanker despite also covering as a lock, and the positional flexibility has been one of UBB’s quietest tactical edges. His campaign ended on a knee injury that drew a standing ovation from both sets of supporters at San Mamés. Whatever the next twelve months take from him, he left having played the half of his career.
Runners-up: Pierre Bochaton (Bordeaux-Bègles), sixteen tackles in the final, the leading total of the match, achieved after a first-half HIA that would have taken any less driven forward off the pitch; Charles Ollivon (Toulon), Le Grand Charles, twenty-one tackles against Glasgow and the last-gasp save against the Stormers at the Round of 16.
5 David Ribbans (RC Toulon): Captain of the Toulon side that delivered the upset of the round at Scotstoun and player of the match at Mayol against the Stormers organisation that released him as a young man. The partnership with Brex down the short side built Toulon’s opening try in the Round of 16. The weight in the engine room a week later made the Glasgow upset possible. England have spent five years searching for a carrying lock, and Ribbans has been doing the job in the south of France throughout.
Runners-up: Boris Palu (Bordeaux-Bègles), fifteen tackles in the final from the second-row and the heavy shift behind UBB’s blitz; James Ryan (Leinster), captained Leinster in stretches across the campaign and was reliable in the engine room until the final exposed everyone in blue.
4 Joe McCarthy (Leinster): The 2025 Lions tourist beat four defenders in the quarter-final against Sale, scored Leinster’s second try in the final and ended the season as the most exciting young second-row in European rugby. McCarthy has the engine of a back-rower, the lineout reading of a senior lock, and the kind of physical authority that says an Ireland captaincy will follow inside three years. He played in a side dismantled at San Mamés and was the player Leinster fans walked away still believing in.
Runners-up: Adam Coleman (Bordeaux-Bègles), quietly excellent across the unbeaten campaign and the platform-builder whose work in the tight let Jefferson Poirot, Woki and Ben Tameifuna produce their headline moments; Adré Smith (Stormers), denied a last-gasp Round of 16 grounding at Mayol by the closest TMO call of the season.
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3 Ben Tameifuna (Union Bordeaux-Bègles): Big Ben. The bench monster that closed every UBB knockout and the man Yannick Bru built the 6-2 split around. Two turnovers in twenty-five minutes off the bench in the final, the same destructive shift that broke Toulouse at Stade Chaban-Delmas in the quarter-final. Tameifuna has produced the closing chapter of two consecutive UBB titles, and the threat of his arrival in the last quarter is now a tactical consideration for every side preparing to face the holders. Pay him in steak.
Runners-up: Carlü Sadie (Bordeaux-Bègles), the starting tighthead through the unbeaten campaign and a recent Springbok alignment call-up; Kyle Sinckler (Toulon), 7/10 at Scotstoun and the experience anchor of Toulon’s set-piece all year.
2 Dan Sheehan (Leinster): The best hooker in Europe even on a day Leinster were dismantled. Sheehan was joint highest rated player at the quarter-final stage alongside Keenan and Willis, and the stat line was unusual even by his standards. A hundred and twenty-three metres made, twelve carries, six defenders beaten, passages where he propped, hooked and flanked in the same afternoon. The 2025 Lions tourist and one of only two Leinster forwards who emerged from San Mamés with credit.
Runners-up: Maxime Lamothe (Bordeaux-Bègles), clean throwing and intelligent maul leadership made everything else around it possible; Jamie George (Saracens), captained the StoneX side through the pool campaign and led the lineout that survived a tough draw.
1 Jefferson Poirot (Union Bordeaux-Bègles): The cultural anchor. Big Jeff has been at Bordeaux through every step of the rise from Top 14 also-rans to back-to-back European champions, and he came back on in the dying minutes of the final after Ugo Boniface received a yellow card. He had finished his shift, sat down, started to cool off. He went back on without a word. Two consecutive unbeaten Champions Cup wins sit behind his pack.
Runners-up: Andrew Porter (Leinster), world-class loosehead even in defeat and a 2025 Lions tourist; Jean-Baptiste Gros (Toulon), the scrummaging anchor of the Toulon front-row through the upset at Scotstoun and the win at Mayol.
READ MORE: Leinster v Bordeaux-Bègles: Five takeaways as ‘untouchable’ champions play ‘rugby from the gods’ on Irish side’s ‘worst day in modern history’
