Leinster’s target is to match tempo of 2019

Brendan Fanning

La Rochelle head coach Ronan O’Gara. Photo: Getty Images

May 02 2021 02:30 AM

The diamond who is Susie Dent — of Countdown fame — gives us a word for the day, every day, on Twitter. On Friday her offering was: “Rogitate (17th century) — to ask the same question repeatedly, usually with unsatisfactory results.”

Timing or what? In a week dominated by the presence of Ronan O’Gara in the La Rochelle camp, and the absence of Johnny Sexton from the Leinster one, Leo Cullen will be wishing a whole heap of rogitation on the home side at Stade Marcel Deflandre this afternoon.

Experience in Europe tells us you need to be prepared to ask questions for a while before you get the right answers. In Leinster’s case they were formulating the words from the very start of the European Cup, in 1995. That opener was away against Milan, a feel-your-way experience best illustrated by the coach driver going to the wrong ground. He got out and shook the padlock on the gate to make sure it was the real thing. With only 12 teams in that first running of the competition it wasn’t a trek to the knock-outs, where Leinster lost to Cardiff in the semi-final. It would take them another seven seasons to get back to the same point on the competition map, only to get lost, against Perpignan.

Meantime in France’s south west La Rochelle were untroubled by thoughts of Europe. It would be another two seasons before they got into the Challenge Cup, and they didn’t debut in the Heineken Champions Cup until 2017, five years after they got a seat at the Top 14 table.

France’s history of eccentric club owners and mad coaches has made for some of the great stories of the game — try the excellent Confessions of a Rugby Mercenary by John Daniel — but Vincent Merling, club president of Stade Rochelais, has been a rock of common sense. If you looked at the map of France in 2015, when Leinster were losing their European semi-final in Toulon, you could see a trend emerging which didn’t look great for the likes of La Rochelle.

The Top 14 presented itself then as a collection of big city teams: Paris with their two heavyweights; Toulouse, Bordeaux, Montpellier and Lyon — all urban areas with populations of 250,000 or more; then the traditional contenders of Clermont and Toulon, hardly village operations. Castres were the odd ones out, but they had tradition and very strong financial support from the Pierre Fabre pharma group.

La Rochelle had neither a tradition of success nor big business heft. You’d have thought their sole pursuit would be survival. Yet Merling built a very solid operation, loved by its town, who have been packing the place out for the last four years.

In Jono Gibbes, and then Ronan O’Gara, on his coaching staff he invested wisely — getting the balance right between locals and imports from rugby jurisdictions with more structure than France is a key to success. Add in a strength and conditioning influence like Johnny Claxton and you can see it all taking shape.

All Black Jerome Kaino has been a huge influence in their back row. The bonus is not just in the results, but in the way they play.

True, they’ve had less work to do to get to this point, but you can’t argue with wins in Edinburgh and Gloucester before doing a number on Sale at home in the quarter-final. Across those three games we’ve seen a few key markers you don’t always get as a unit with French teams: they’re fit; their discipline is okay — they didn’t lose the count in any of the games so far, leaving them fourth best in the competition; and they have a corps of power athletes.

The last bit is key to how they play. Levani Botia and Will Skelton, for example, don’t provide offloads or passes out of the tackle by losing collisions. Neither does Pierre Bougarit nor Gregory Alldritt. Opening the gate on their bench won’t see the quality of that drop like a stone.

You’ll have heard talk last week about the size of La Rochelle and how Leinster will look to move them around. Brilliant idea. First that will require the ball; second it’s on the presumption La Rochelle will start leaving gaps all over the shop once they have to go beyond six or seven phases. If they start looking like a sieve at that point then O’Gara’s derriére will be in a sling.

He doesn’t expect that to be the case, though this will be a whole new test for them. Are you wondering what he has planned for Ross Byrne? Oddly, not as much as he would have planned for Johnny Sexton. It’s a huge source of comfort to Leinster that Byrne has a head for the big occasion. Leinster without Sexton does not add up to Leinster without hope. Today will be Byrne’s 100th appearance for his province. He knows his way around, and the speed with which he tuned in to the right frequency in Sandy Park in the quarter-final was what saved Leinster against Exeter.

It’s hard to put a value on that win, given the circumstances. Since last September Leinster have been chugging along with the pain of losing to Saracens in the 2020 quarter-final, eating away at them. To have lost in Exeter would have posed all sorts of awkward questions.

Instead they are reaffirmed in their self-belief. Whatever happens in the opening half hour — bad or good — they have the ability to park it and move on. Leinster would make that journey more comfortable if the backline support from the bench was more experienced, and if they weren’t still relying on Devin Toner and Scott Fardy for big games.

Still, their reference point will be one of their best days against French opposition: the home semi-final win over Toulouse in 2019. The target is to match that tempo and width, which ran the away team off their feet. Toulouse hadn’t the breath to rogitate. Leo Cullen hopes neither will La Rochelle.