Contrasting Fan Cultures at the 2025 Champions Cup Final

Watching a major final as a neutral is an interesting experience. It provides an opportunity to soak in the full spectacle, the pre-game atmospherics, and the post-game fireworks free from anxiety and the attendant emotional highs and lows of watching your team vie for silverware. It also allows one to indulge in some light comparative anthropology by studying the contrasting fan cultures of both finalists’ supporters.

First, the spectacle. The 2025 final is played in the Principality Stadium with the roof closed. The Principality is a truly impressive edifice, dwarfing almost all other structures in the city, including a multitude of other sporting venues, and dominating the riverside. Inside, with the roof shut, it is a cavernous cathedral of rugby, the weak spring sun shining through the four glass corners of the stadium like divine light coming down from the sporting gods. And it is loud. On this 30^th anniversary of the Champions Cup, the EPCR have put together a pre-game show which, with a deafening classical hype music soundtrack, cycles through the names of all previous championship teams and builds perfectly to a pyrotechnic finale that introduces today’s contenders, Bordeaux Bègles and Northampton Saints. Only the ecstatic roar of the 70,000 supporters gathered inside can drown this intro out.

Bordeaux fans during the build-up to the final

After all that build-up, the match itself almost can’t help but disappoint the non-partisan observer. It gets off to a flying start, with Northampton scoring after only two minutes. But there are soon reminders of the brutality of rugby, with Northampton losing James Ramm after three minutes and then George Furbank, knocked out by a stray knee to the face, after four. Bordeaux are soon on the board following a Damien Penaud try. They look very much like the better team from then on. The scores may be tied at 20 apiece at half-time, but Bordeaux have an attacking edge that Saints lack with two key members of their back line out within minutes. Bordeaux tack on a further eight unanswered points in the second half to claim their first Champions Cup. The better team on the day come away deserving winners, albeit of a pretty uninspiring contest that is far from being one for the ages. If only Northampton could have repeated the fight that saw them overcome Leinster at Croke Park in the semi-finals this might have been a classic, but those early injuries, and the relative lack of depth in Premiership sides compared to their wealthier French counterparts, keep this from happening.

Now to the fans. Ahead of the game, the streets of central Cardiff are flooded with supporters of both side. The Bordeaux contingent is all confident excitement, co-opting the tune of Fat Les’ ‘Vindaloo’ and replacing the ‘na na na’s with a chant of, ‘Allez! Allez! U-B-B!’ and waving flags with abandon. The atmosphere amongst the Saints faithful is more febrile and nervy. Throngs of supporters stare quietly at the opposing fans, with only a few breaking into counter-chants of, ‘Shoe army!’

The Shoe Army in full voice

About those shoes. Northampton’s cobblers, the likes of Church’s and Crockett & Jones foremost amongst them, are very much the shoemakers of the upper middle class and above. Northampton fans, or at least those in my section of the stadium, appear to be their target market. There are gilets, there are cashmere three-quarter zips, there are pink Oxford shirts. Behind me, a group of late middle-aged men have the kind of conversation you’d expect to hear between a crowd of finance types in the Warner Stand at Lord’s during a lull in a Test rather than 60 minutes into the most significant match their club has played in a generation. They discuss not only the disparities in wages between French and English clubs, but also the intricacies of how many Top 14 stadiums are funded by their local municipalities meaning teams have further financial headroom compared to Premiership clubs which must foot the bill for the running costs of their grounds. There is a baffling degree of disinterest in the events on the field. One of the group repeatedly taps me on the shoulder to ask me my opinion on marginal refereeing decisions. Perhaps it’s because he sees I’m here alone and thinks I need a friend. That’s nice, but, when he asks where I’m from and who I support before waxing lyrical about how much he enjoys watching Huw Jones for Glasgow and Scotland, I have to question whether he’s come to cheer on his team or if he thinks he’s at some kind of rugby networking event.

Perhaps these individuals aren’t a representative cross-section of Saints fans, but it does seem that, as a group, their cheering is largely in response to their team’s successes. Chants of ‘shoe army!’ and choruses of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ come after scores, turnovers, and penalties won. They are absent when the team seems to need a boost after those injuries, or when they need to defend against Bordeaux’s unrelenting attack. That being said, when Bordeaux miss a scoring opportunity because of an embarrassing knock-on, one inspired Saints fan makes the inspired decision to sing, ‘You dropped the ball’, to the tune of La Marseillaise and fellow Northampton fans are quick enough on the uptake to turn this into an amazing mass trolling of the opposition.

The Bordeaux supporters, by contrast, are in full voice throughout, waving their flags and making noise constantly like they’re survivors of a shipwreck trying to catch the attention of search boats. The six or seven Bègles fans in the row in front of me, despite being in a Northampton-dominated section, don’t seem to pause for breath from the moment they arrive in their seats to the final whistle. They are constantly on their feet, celebrating every score with euphoric fervour and screaming with vitriolic outrage at perceived officiating injustices. Instead of rising to the occasion and matching their passion, the Saints fans around me grumble amongst themselves, but loudly enough to be heard by the targets of their displeasure, that these people really ought to behave themselves and sit down.

Does the backing of their fans make a material difference to a team’s performance on the field? I can’t say. In this game, at least, it seemed like both teams were prone to self-sabotage, with unforced handling errors taking scores off the board for both sides. But one can’t help but question whether a little more vigour from the Shoe Army might have helped bridge that eight-point gap.

Glory

Despair