Is it a goal to coach Ireland one day?

“Of course it is, damn right it is,” he says, with the same ruddy-cheeked passion he used to exude as a player who won 128 caps and scored over 1,000 Test points for Ireland, and was selected for three Lions tours.

“Because that’s the ultimate. Winning a World Cup with your country. That’s what you want to do. But the reality is you may have to do another nation before you get the Irish job because the Ireland job is a big, big job.

“But that doesn’t frighten me one bit. I have been consistent in my steps and I feel I can add stuff to certain teams, so in that regard it wouldn’t be from a lack of belief and confidence for taking on the job. Far from it. It would be hugely exciting and a massive privilege.”

It is a message that will not be lost at the offices of the IRFU, for in many ways O’Gara is treading a path to be the perfect modern-day coach, undertaking a variety of roles far from his comfort zone to broaden his outlook.

O’Gara has never been afraid to speak his mind, yet the contrast between his mindset now, eight years into a coaching career, from his playing days is sharp. It is hard to imagine the former Munster fly-half ever being consumed by doubt, but a fragile side exists.

“When I was a player, I think I was very different because my abiding memories from my playing days were probably nerves and tension and the mindset of what potentially could go wrong on the day, you know? I don’t really have that anymore”.

The transformation in outlook has not happened by chance. If there was a heartfelt pull to start his coaching career at Munster, that innate single-mindedness drove him instead to expose himself to contrasting and challenging coaching cultures.

“It would have been an absolute disaster to have gone into Munster,” he adds. “We are all influenced by our environment and institutionalised at certain stages.

“I played with a lot of really good players who became very good friends. But if you want to be a real coach, it’s not great as a starting point to be going in and having conversations with guys that you’ve already spent 10 years with as a player.”

Instead, his first destination was Racing 92, where took up a position as skills coach in 2013 following his playing retirement, and one of the most high-profile players under his tutelage that year was Johnny Sexton, his former rival for the Ireland fly-half position.

“You go from playing with Munster and Ireland where you are a big name, and there are certain benefits with that, but going into a position as skills coach was perfect as you need time and space to get your head around stopping playing and looking out how you can add value to the current crop,” he adds.

“I was so inexperienced and did a lot of thinking and making decisions on my feet but it grew from there and you see where there’s potential weaknesses in the coaching structure and then you get more responsibility and the other coaches give you more trust and you thrive on that.”

O’Gara would help Racing win the Top 14 title in 2016 but his real sliding doors moment came when Scott Robertson invited him to become his assistant at the Crusaders in New Zealand through links with his work with former All Blacks and Cantabrian fly-half Dan Carter at the Parisian club.

“The great thing about those two seasons with the Crusaders was experiencing their mindset and it became infectious,” adds O’Gara, who helped the New Zealand franchise win successive Super Rugby titles before he joined La Rochelle as head coach in 2019.

“My head got turned upside down. They see the possibilities but as a player I would have probably seen what could go wrong.

“But if you flip that on its head it becomes quite powerful and then when you have your whole squad believe in that it becomes a habit and the habit becomes a behaviour.

“It was an environment where I was engaging on a daily basis with a lot of really good people. Their ideas are simple but their values were very straight as well, which is important for coaching.”

With a newly-established outlook on the game, when Jono Gibbes called with an offer of the head coach job at La Rochelle it was impossible to turn down.

O’Gara had seen similarities between the French side and Munster when he had travelled there with Racing 92. A passionate and knowledgeable support; a connection and culture that had yet to be properly mined.

his eclectic experiences, both as a player and coach, have since brought the club to the verge of a new status as a European super power, underscored by their powerhouse victory over Leinster in the semi-final.

If the test against European titans Toulouse will reveal just how far they have come under O’Gara, he sees it only as the beginning of the journey as he takes total control next season when Gibbes joins Clermont Auvergne.

“It’s another opportunity for this team to test themselves against a top team in Europe and we don’t have any history but that doesn’t really matter,” he adds.

“One team will win on Saturday and one team will lose but you restart from zero on Sunday morning no matter how it goes. You have to keep adding layers and layers and hopefully you will then have more confidence and self-belief to perform.”

An attribute O’Gara the coach appreciates more than ever. (© Telegraph Media Group Ltd 2021)

La Rochelle vs Toulouse

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Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]