Ronan O’Gara: We aren’t a band of brothers yet, but we’re getting there
GOLDEN MOMENT: La Rochelle’s New Zealand fly-half Ihaia West celebrates after scoring a try against Lyon at the Marcel-Deflandre Stadium. La Rochelle coach Ronan O’Gara feels 80 minutes on Sunday won’t define their journey but all the indicators point to a good performance against Leinster.
The pre-match statistics suggest that Sunday will be my 12th European Cup semi-final. Ten were as a player with Munster.
La Rochelle have no European heritage to speak of so the comparison to Munster is largely irrelevant. But the team I played with provides an important reference point when creating a genuine team bond is the goal.
And that is one of our top priorities at Stade Rochelais. We have become a tight knit group and that’s the biggest compliment I can give the players, and the thing I am most proud of. You’ll only become a good rugby team once you’ve bonded as a group.
I can’t say we are a team of brothers yet, but that’s the ultimate goal. That was the bedrock of my professional career with Munster. I started writing names from those teams here but stopped at 23 for fear of leaving someone out.
That was a band of brothers.
The sort that if you bumped into them now, or a decade hence, we’d go straight for a pint and pick up where we left off. You liked their company, you thrived playing with them and you cared about them when you played. That is not something that’s innate in French culture and maybe there is something in the Irishness of the head coach that might help get them tighter as a group.
I don’t know.
But what we have emerging is not fake or superficial. Fellas are comfortable in their own skin and in chatting about their fears, anxieties and vulnerabilities. If that becomes the norm, you have a powerful group. I can see here that the players are forming good relationships.
That’s the fascinating side of this job — getting these La Rochelle boys to realise how good they could be. We haven’t put it all together, not by a long way, but they could be extremely good. We are early in our understanding of what consistency of preparation looks like, what consistency of behaviour looks like and how you can benefit from those over the course of a campaign. You cannot have that see-saw where one day training is nine out-of-10 and then the following day lads are dropping seven balls in a row.
Some have got carried away with the talk of keeping the ball alive and the whole Crusaders mindset, fascinating as it is. The thing is you can’t cut and paste a culture from one hemisphere to the other. I am trying to take a dollop of whatever I have learned in Munster, with Ireland, the Lions, Racing and the Crusaders and put it into the melting pot to try and come up with a good formula that works for La Rochelle.
What blew my mind in Christchurch was the positivity of believing in a plan and believing in people. Of dealing with good people who rise above the naysayers. It comes back to that — good people — and there’s still a lot of that ingredient from Munster in everything I do.
The intriguing challenge is getting the best from yourself and unlocking the potential in the players so that they don’t put limits on their ambition. And that is a good thing, that’s why it fascinates me: why are you putting limits on things, I ask them? You have got to think beyond the finishing line of lifting a trophy because if you don’t, what comes after? What are you looking to achieve next season? And the one after. You have to constantly get the best out of yourself. Playing in a semi-final this weekend is poles apart from winning a Champions Cup or a Bouclier, so there is so much ceiling for this group to reach for.
There are material indicators that you are making progress, like position in the League. But you know as a coach you are doing a decent job when the players start owning their own environment. As in, ‘coach stop it there for 30 secs, I want to talk to the group’. When that comes from one of the team leaders, it’s a good moment.
Sunday will be a good moment. One must respect the weight of the history that goes with the Bouclier, but beyond the confines of the domestic league, the Champions Cup semi-final against Leinster is probably the biggest game in the club’s history.
The vibe around the club, in the kitchen, around the training facility, confirms that sense. With it is a tinge of regret for the town that it won’t be a memorable experience for all on Sunday. It’s a Covid zone. The place would be absolutely hopping.
Even around the town this week, the amount of positive energy there would normally be, you don’t get that now. You go from work to home. The non-essential outlets are still closed but there is talk of confinement being lifted next weekend. As you get a bit older, you tend to savour these occasions and what they mean to the people around the town. You might wander out once a week to the town for a coffee to see what things are like. You need to enjoy life. You can remain focused while still chatting and bantering. The reason we all play sport is to get good emotions and feelings out of it.
What value is my previous 11 semi-finals this Sunday? Next to nothing. It is the La Rochelle players who have the opportunity to express themselves. That’s the key bit. I’ve never talked about those Munster semis around here. That’s buried. This is a different career. My job is to get them to feel good about themselves on matchday so that they show their best hand. Does it always happen? No. But these boys must have complete autonomy of thought, desire, and implementation.
Eighty minutes on Sunday won’t define our journey, even if some try to box it off as such. There’s been a lot of good work gone into getting us to this point. And all the indicators to date say we will give a good account of ourselves.
Whether it’s Jono Gibbes or I, we don’t really have any inside track on Leinster and that’s a point worth making. I’m finished playing since 2013, their game has substantially changed, as has their personnel. I know a bit about their character and the general character of Irish people but aside from that, we have watched the videos, same as any other coach would. I understand them because I am Irish, that is my only advantage.
I know Johnny very well, but he won’t be playing. I know Tadhg Furlong, Cian Healy, Devin Toner, Sean Cronin, and was with a few of them for a week on a summer tour with Ireland. I know others as players on a video, but I don’t know their personalities — which would be more important for me.
What I have seen is their trust in out-half Ross Byrne. Test rugby may be a level higher and perhaps that trust in him isn’t there yet in the international realm, but it’s Leinster we are facing this weekend. In the Exeter game you could plainly see his colleagues have 100% faith that Ross Byrne will deliver for them.
My moles claim Leinster did a full-on training session last Friday with their Champions Cup team. The side against Munster was purposed to get game time into the likes of James Ryan. It’s worth stating, however, that Leinster had some good players there, but Munster looked sharper. This was no 13-10 scrape, Munster actually looked good in the manner of the victory, which is a positive for self-belief and the conviction.
We were off yesterday, but out-half Ahaia West did a little bit of passing on Wednesday. He will have to train fully today and pass the full range of motion tests to be considered but Jules Plisson, our other 10, is looking good. He has hit all his markers, he trained Wednesday for the first time, but again he needs to train Friday if he wants to put himself in the frame.
These are golden moments to be involved. It took us that few years in the early noughties with Munster to appreciate that it wasn’t good enough to be mixing it at the business end of the campaign. You have to be winning stuff to be taken seriously. La Rochelle is not a club that’s used to winning big, which is why I’ve accentuated the fact that I am not here to participate.
That’s non-negotiable, whether it’s a 12th or a first European Cup semi-final.
