Peter Jackson: Ronan O’Gara to return to scene of the failure that made him

Not even Ross Byrne’s late converted try could save Leinster from their worst semi-final defeat since Munster, and O’Gara, outplayed them in 2006

La Rochelle’s Will Skelton celebrates with Dany Priso after scoring a try against Leinster. Picture: Dave Winter/Inpho

Ronan O’Gara has never forgotten his first European Cup final at Twickenham for all the wrong reasons — how Munster, the odds-on favourites, found a way of losing to a Northampton team ravaged by injury.

Typically, he confronted the sequence of ‘cock-ups’ surrounding the occasion, then delivered a withering verdict: “We failed. I failed. I had a chance to be a hero and I blew it.”

He also remembered something else from the most anti-climactic of finals in front of 70,000, that the experience helped make him the man he became. In his despair on that day barely a month into the new millennium, O’Gara could never in his wildest dreams have imagined he would be returning 21 years later in charge of a team he’d probably never heard of then.

In the course of smashing the dream Champions’ Cup final to smithereens in tandem with Jono Gibbes, La Rochelle answered the Irish head coach’s conviction that their time had come to reach the very pinnacle of the European game, not next season or the one after that, but now.

They seized his ‘why-not-us?’ mantra to such devastating effect that Leinster, the team for all seasons who invariably found the answer to a way out of the tightest corners, had none.

Leinster had suffered worse beatings on the scoreboard but they had never been pounded into submission like this. Fifteen minutes before the end, they were left with nowhere to go, counted out by the relentlessly pulverising power of their opponents.

It may have taken them fully 10 minutes to lay their hands on the ball but from then on the yellow peril pummelled them at every turn. The damage wrought by a colossal power harnessed to matching technical proficiency reduced Leinster to such a state that not even Ross Byrne’s late converted try could save them from their worst semi-final defeat since Munster, and O’Gara, outplayed them 30-6 at Lansdowne Road in 2006.

When the season began, the concern had been about making La Rochelle believe that a place among the elite was theirs for the taking.

O’Gara had spoken about “getting these boys to realise how good they could be” and remove the doubts shackling their ambition.

Toulouse, for one, will realise now, if they hadn’t before, that they are good enough to go the whole hog at Twickenham in three weeks’ time, when, glory be, there are plans to welcome the fans back, if only 10,000.

The 26th final will be the fifth all-French affair following those of Toulouse-Perpignan in 2003, Toulouse-Stade Francais in 2008, Toulouse-Biarritz in 2010 and Toulon-Clermont (2013, 2015).

Between them the two leading clubs in the Top 14 have eliminated every challenger from England, Scotland, Wales, and now Ireland.

All it needs now is for La Rochelle to emulate Exeter last season and remind every aspiring club that there are no limits to what can be achieved.

For O’Gara, the reunion at Twickenham on a day when ‘HQ’ will be taken over lock, stock, and barrel by the French will be in stark contrast to the multiple ‘cock-ups’ which undid Munster 21 years earlier.

Whatever happens, rugby’s European Super League is alive and well.

Are Ulster the new Spursor the new Mayo?

No amount of sunshine in Belfast could shift the darkest of metaphorical clouds hanging over Ravenhill. Ulster have been knocked out of so many tournaments so often it’s easy to lose count.

Finding a silver lining to the dirtiest mass of cumulus is infinitely more difficult but one, of sorts, can be spotted without too much forensic examination.

Ulster can now claim to be up there with the best from other footballing codes when it comes to losses on a chronic scale.

Spurs, for example, have lost all eight of their FA Cup semi-finals within the last 30 years. The Red Hand’s second-half capitulation in the East Midlands on Friday night extends their run of losing semis to seven: Six in the PRO12/14, one in the European Challenge Cup.

They are also closing in on Mayo’s Gaelic footballers, beaten in 10 All-Ireland finals since 1990. Add three losing finals, all inflicted by Leinster, to their lengthening list of semis and Ulster, too are in double figures.

That doesn’t include five losing quarter-finals in the Champions’ Cup, against Saracens (twice), Northampton, Leinster, and, most recently, Toulouse last September. That famous day at Lansdowne Road at the end of the 20th century when Simon Mason’s six penalties blitzed Colomiers and the northerners showed Munster and Leinster the way to conquer Europe fades ever deeper into the memory.

At least they have won a major title, albeit when the English clubs made their pointless boycott. One major title is one more than Steve Stricker managed in a lifetime, not that the American golfer will ever go hungry, not with career earnings on the USPGA tour of $44,882,424.

Sexton to Ford, 10s should be wary of ref chat

International out-halves are still being spooked by the sight of Pascal Gauzere and how he allowed Wales to pull a fast one against England during the Six Nations.

A fortnight later at Murrayfield when Johnny Sexton expressed anxiety about Scotland doing something similar after Romain Poite had asked him to speak to the team, Romain Poite read his mind: “Don’t be scared, Johnny.”

Fast forward six weeks to last Friday night and a different captain in a different match at a different venue but exactly the same scenario. Ulster had turned up the heat at Welford Road when a painful image flashed through George Ford’s head as soon as Gauzere told him to warn his Leicester team, massed in front of their goalposts, about indiscipline.

The Tigers’ captain had been there before, left high and dry in Cardiff listening to Owen Farrell relay a message from Gauzere while Dan Biggar cross-kicked for Josh Adams to score. How could Ford forget? So it was only natural that he should ask Gauzere, below, for reassurance: “You won’t re-start the game, will you?”

The art of meaningless substitutions

In any global league table of sporting absurdities, no category can be more ferociously competitive than the one reserved for meaningless substitutions in rugby union.

What happened in the last minute at Toulouse on Saturday afternoon looked absurd enough to go straight to number one.

There were 26 seconds left of a one-sided semi-final — 26 seconds! — when the winners made a double change, neither of which was forced by injury.

Juan Cruz for Cheslin Kolbe on the right wing, Baptiste Germain for Antoine Dupont at scrum half.

What, you may well ask, was the point?

None, unless it meant something in appearance money.

Even the two young subs in question would shy away from claiming to have played in a Champions Cup semi-final.

My European team of the weekend

15 Anthony Watson (Bath).

14 Cheslin Kolbe (Toulouse).

13 Matias Moroni (Leicester).

12 Pita Akhi (Toulouse).

11 Matthis Lebel (Toulouse).

10 Ihaia West (La Rochelle).

9 Tawera Kerr Barlow (La Rochelle).

1 Reda Wardi (La Rochelle).

2 Bismarck du Plessis (Montpellier).

3 Uini Atonio (La Rochelle).

4 Will Skelton (La Rochelle).

5 Paul Willemse (Montpellier).

6 Gregory Alldritt (La Rochelle).

7 Josh van der Flier (Leinsteer).

8 Victor Vito (La Rochelle).