Ronan O'Gara: Getting used to being blamed for anything and everything

I am figuring this out in real time. There’s no manual for these things. Even if there was, every day and every situation is different and gets treated on its merits, writes Ronan O'Gara

Seven miles due east of Perpignan is the delightful seaside resort of Canet-en-Roussillon. It’s 20 degrees and I am just out of the deep blue. Bringing the La Rochelle squad here for a refreshing and restorative mini-camp before our ninth Top 14 game of the season on Saturday seemed an appropriate change of routine, I reckoned.

For the main part, everyone here agrees. It’s those left behind in La Rochelle I’m in the doghouse with. Wives and partners with no second pair of hands during the October school break equals Rog at the centre of several testy phone conversations between home and here. Fortunately, I am out of earshot.

There’s been a lot of excessive scrutiny about my change in title at La Rochelle and what it means in real terms this season.

Whatever way you slice and dice it, ‘Director of Rugby’ implies chief cook and bottle washer. I’m more comfortable with ‘head coach’ role even if responsibilities are no longer confined to inside the white lines.

When results go wrong, the club hierarchy are looking to you. There are glum faces all around and your expression is a weathervane for the mood inside the club. When a player is negotiating his contract there’s an implied expectation (from both sides) that you need to be all over this.

That you need to understand both the player’s importance but also the cause and effect on overall budget of agreeing an extension.

On it goes. And when there are kids to be brought to sports during mid-term, well shouldn’t you have factored in that before scooting off to balmy Canet-en-Roussillon for a few days?

I am figuring this out in real time. There’s no manual for these things. Even if there was, every day and every situation is different and gets treated on its merits.

Donnacha Ryan has come in as a coach and his head literally hasn’t stopped spinning to date, not helped by the fact that the headspace for his day job is compromised by the need to pursue coaching qualifications. Already that has taken him to Montpellier for a week and will soon necessitate some time spent with the Leicester Tigers. He’s looking at me with that puppy dog look that suggests I have the gift of more time to give him. I don’t.

He will get better at the time-management thing, just as I am trying to. For a while there it was seven-to-seven every day and the early season results didn’t help mine or anyone else’s mood. I am a notoriously bad loser and a bad person to be around when results are not good which is neither healthy for me nor beneficial to the family, much less what I am doing day-to-day. I am finding it important to utilise the wise counsel on recruitment and budgetary issues of Robert Mohr and CEO Pierre Venayre, two La Rochelle club stalwarts.

What many outside Stade Rochelais fail to realise is how much the heart was ripped asunder by two major final defeats in the summer. Losing both the Champions Cup final and the Top 14 final to Toulouse really stripped us bare, there’s no point in saying anything else. In their wake, there was a period of mourning and it hung over us like a fog in the early skirmishes of this season. We drove the Top 14 ambition very hard last season. Because La Rochelle does not have a heritage when it comes to the Bouclier, we red-circled Stade de France on June 26 from a long way out. If the Champions Cup final was the glamour date, the Top 14 decider was the meat and potatoes of what our campaign should be about.

Psychologically, then, it was annoying to fall again to Toulouse in the first game of this Top 14 season at home, all the more so for the manner of the defeat. We were just about to turn the screw on them when Will Skelton got red-carded.

Losses to Racing 92 and Clermont away followed but easily the most annoying was the defeat in Montpellier. That one ticked me off because the performance was well off it. It got me agitated and focused on doing my head coach stuff bang on. The role is the same to a large extent even if there are extra responsibilities. But it’s the reason I baulked at the idea of a director of rugby title. In discussions with the club, I emphasised the model of the English football manager who is directing the player and on-field stuff and relies on key operatives around him to handle many of the logistical extras.

There are different ways to skin this Top 14 thing. It’s a long slog and there’s no reason for panic in the early weeks. Fortunately, we’ve jumped back up to fourth now with three wins on the bounce and ultimately that’s where you need to be knocking about. The French internationals around the League have departed now for the November international preparations and we have a pair of important matches to conclude the first block of 10 games — away to Perpignan tomorrow and at home to Bordeaux Begles next Friday. The Champions Cup won’t be long coming round but everyone is quite clear around where our priorities must be — winning a first domestic title for the club.

There was an unfortunate and lazy narrative that getting to the Top 14 final last season represented the realisation of a goal of some sort. This is a mindset I am quite determined to eradicate.

Last weekend we had a comprehensive win over Toulon, who have since parted company with head coach Patrice Collazo (and put James Coughlan in temporary charge, by the way). It was a performance reflective of a team beginning to find its stride and the 39-6 win was important for momentum, but it was not without its complications for the head coach, or director of rugby, or whatever you want to call him.

I failed to properly register my position on the team sheet which, strictly speaking, prevented me from going down pitchside during the game. And the LNR is pretty rigid with this stuff and the fourth official told me I had no right to be down near the sideline, and I politely disagreed. And we politely exchanged our respective positions and pleasantries and lo and behold, it has landed me in a disciplinary hearing next week. You would think I’d be getting a modicum of sense.

I had a few of the old Munster boys over to me during the summer and a few hectic nights ensued. In conversations with Mick Galwey and David Wallace, we reminded ourselves of some of the belligerent stuff we did back in the day. Maybe it’s just the nature of the beast to be thick and stubborn, and no job title is going to eradicate those tendencies altogether. Sometimes, though, we all need to start becoming a bit more savvy and focus on the big picture stuff.

Toulouse are the side in everyone’s crosshairs. Their scrum half Antoine Dupont has been named French captain for the November internationals against Argentina, Georgia, and the All Blacks. The lad is operating on a higher plane to any other player in the Top 14. He is like someone playing a different game to everyone else, Lomu-esque in the ability to dominate a game on his own terms. He will be one of the talking points of November, trust me.