As with Leinster, so the margins were wafer thin for Ronan O’Gara and La Rochelle. As the man himself noted afterwards, had his team come up inches short that would have amounted to three final defeats in two seasons and they would have been deemed “bottlers”. Instead his well-primed and voracious team have delivered the club’s first major trophy and surely the most significant by any Irish coach abroad ever.
Fair play to him and them. Beaten finalists who return a year later are always dangerous beasts, and it’s doubtful if La Rochelle would have summoned the irresistible momentum for Retiere’s try had it not been for the experience of losing two finals last season.
When he first relocated back to France from the Crusaders and hooked dup with La Rochelle at the start of the 2019-20 season they had been competing in the Challenge Cup and couldn’t have envisaged a day like this so soon.
“No, way off.”
In his first season as an assistant to Jono Gibbes, they lost four of six matches in the Champions Cup but on reaching last season’s final he said: “You could see it coming together.”
“The boys were probably a bit shocked by how much I love the competition,” said O’Gara, who of course helped Munster win the trophy twice and has now emulated Leo Cullen in becoming the only man to win it as both a player and coach.
“It’s only when you go to France that you see what the bouclier means. It’s a fantastic competition. It’s a marathon but they weren’t used to the Champions Cup. They didn’t play that many games in it up to 24 months ago so it was something a bit new to them and trying to create that mindset.
“The Top 14 was a marathon but the Champions Cup could be a sprint. Once you got a bit of a momentum they could see that, yeah, this crazy Irishman knows what he is talking about and we could have a go at both. But you’ve got to win your home games and your away games to win the Champions Cup and they were like ‘coach, it’s not possible’. They got into it, really into it.
“It was obviously really hard because it was Covid rugby and there was no public there, but it’s a monumental day for the club. It was all about winning, finding a way to bring that cup back to La Rochelle. When Monday comes and Thursday comes its ‘2022 La Rochelle’ on that cup. It’s a little surreal at the minute but we’ll enjoy it.”
Leading La Rochelle to the Promised Land has been every bit as rewarding if different from doing so with Munster as a player.
“My immediate reaction is that I am the coach, the boys have accepted me, they might have found me a bit strict and difficult at the start, demanding, repetition,” he said, and exchanged a knowing smile with his captain Gregory Alldritt.
“But I’ve got a really great group. I love going to the training ground, I love trying to stimulate them, I love trying to get the best out of them. It’s a group that just needed to be brought together a little bit and we needed to find the finishing line. That’s where the leaders became very important. They had enough of competing. They wanted to win.”
Hailing the defensive system and mindset that kept Leinster tryless, O’Gara added: “They may have one or two opportunities but I don’t think there was eight or 10 left out there, if I recall the game correctly. That sums up the want in this team. They wanted it for each other.”
Surely now endeared for life in his new home, with a welcoming reception of around 5,000 to greet the squad at the airport at 3am and anything from 15,000 to 20,000 expected to turn up for the trophy parade, O’Gara even used the opportunity to promote the city on France’s southwest coast.
“I couldn’t recommend the place highly enough for holidays, a break. Come to La Rochelle, they are decent people, this will mean a lot to the supporters. It’s a club, can you believe, that had never won silverware. We will go home with the Champions Cup. It’s a special day, a special story. It really is. I’m buzzing. I’m not showing it but I am very, very, very proud of them.”
Through his various WhatsApp groups and elsewhere he described the support from “home” as “unbelievable”.
“My phone hasn’t stopped going this morning. A lot of good people out there wishing me well. A lot of ex-teammates, a lot of guys that I played with and they appreciate I suppose what these boys do.
“It was interesting this morning, I came across a decent Leinster supporter. He just said `no matter what happens those boys are a credit to you’. That’s important, that respect with how dominant Leinster have been. They have given people the passion and the drive, within us, to be as good as they are. We are a long way behind where they are, but today is a great starting point for La Rochelle and it is important that we kick on.”
