La Rochelle president: 'I have a trusting relationship with Ronan O'Gara. It’s superb to work like that'
President of the French Top 14 rugby union club Stade Rochelais, Vincent Merling. Picture: Joel Saget
The way club president Vincent Merling tells it, La Rochelle are almost as pleased to have Ronan O’Gara as their head coach as they are with being in Saturday’s Champions Cup final.
Having overpowered Leinster in the last four, the French side will lift their first major trophy if they beat fellow Top 14 high-flyers Toulouse at Twickenham. Merling is delighted that O’Gara - along with director of rugby Jono Gibbes – is the man who has led them to this point.
“In our minds, it was nearly impossible to bring Ronan here,” Merling told the . “It was wonderful news for our club. I loved Ronan as a player… it’s incredible this willingness to go to the limits of potential in every area in order to win. It was new to us but I understood very, very quickly.
“He always won in his life because he always went to the maximum of his potential as a player. He was a great player and he wants Stade Rochelais to be a great club.”
Now 71, Merling thought he had seen it all at his hometown club on the west coast of France. Few people involved in sport, after all, can boast such a long involvement with one team. Merling’s father brought him to La Rochelle’s matches as a boy, where they watched his older brother Yves-Marie in action. Vincent himself joined the club’s junior ranks aged 17 in 1967, and he would later play for the senior team - alongside his sibling - in the back row.
He was a club director in 1980 when David Hickey - then a medical student and a multiple All-Ireland winner with Dublin - became the first foreign player at La Rochelle.
By 1991 Merling had built up a successful coffee industry business, and intervened with other former players when the club hit financial problems. This July will mark 30 years since he became president.
“You have to understand that Stade Rochelais was a club that battled every year not to be relegated to a lower division,” he said of the team whose latest run in the French top-flight has lasted seven years.
La Rochelle spent years scrapping away in the second division before being in a position to sign impressive imports like Victor Vito and Will Skelton. Merling oversaw the transition to professionalism in the late 1990s, but he stresses that La Rochelle never discarded its identity and member-led ethos.
“For us, the institution is stronger than the team, and the team is stronger than the players,” he says. “We built our club together with the whole Rochelais community to give structure to the club, to build a stadium that welcomes 16,000 supporters - of which 13,000 are season ticket holders - in optimal conditions.
“We also constructed our development centre to allow our players to work in a context that is optimal for physical and technical preparation.
Merling is a firm believer that success comes through stability. Before the arrival of Gibbes in November 2018, three previous coaches had all spent at least seven years in charge of the team.
Although ex-Leinster and Ulster coach Gibbes is leaving for Clermont at the end of the season, continuity is assured by O’Gara. The two-time European champion has contributed to a dramatic change since arriving in 2019.
“Patrice Collazo hated losing and he started to instil this winning mentality in our club,” Merling says of the current Toulon head coach. “But with Ronan and Jono it was intensified. I remember the first message from Jono, but especially from Ronan. He said: ‘We’re going to be French champions. We’re going to be European champions. I want La Rochelle to be a big European club.’
“As president of this club for 30 years, oooh! It was something that I never dared to say… I always said ‘we’re going to try, we’re happy to be here.’ But the winning culture was never as strong as that.
“I recognise that they’ve given us this desire, to be able to believe in ourselves and our ability and to work and prepare ourselves to be champions. To be in the final is the realisation of this new culture within the club.”
O’Gara said a holiday in La Rochelle six years ago and similarities with Munster had led the ex-Racing 92 forwards coach to return to France following his spell with Crusaders in New Zealand. Merling is thankful for the 44-year-old not only making the move in the first place, but also for agreeing to take on more responsibility in the wake of Gibbes’ upcoming departure.
“He knew the club and its great support, which does really bring to mind the Irish public,” Merling said. “But he also saw the quality of life in La Rochelle and [the connected island of] Ile de Re. Incidentally, a lot of Irish people come on holidays to La Rochelle and Ile de Re from Cork and elsewhere.
“But I also think he felt our club had this rich family culture and loyalty to the values of the sport which is perfectly suited to Ronan’s culture. I think those three factors led him to take his decision but he also felt that he could make Stade Rochelais into a big European club. For us, it’s great.”
Merling is famous for giving coaches space, but his day-to-day relationship with O’Gara has become a close one.
“I’m a familial president but an emotional one too,” he explains. “I like to have an emotional and strong connection. My home on Ile de Re is 50 metres away from Ronan’s and his marvellous family. His wife, his children, it’s an example of an extraordinary family. I have a trusting relationship and it’s superb to work like that.”
La Rochelle consistently sold out the Stade Marcel Deflandre pre-pandemic, and the fervour about the picturesque port city has grown with both a European final and a Bouclier within reach. On their departure for London on Thursday, Merling and the team plotted their way through the smoke from flares as they were cheered on by hundreds of supporters at the airport.
Le @staderochelais en route vers l’Angleterre pour la finale de la Champions Cup ! pic.twitter.com/oWpoEjUoci
— François Ventéjou (@francoventejou) May 20, 2021
The affable club president rarely does interviews but was only too happy to spread the word about La Rochelle to the Irish people. He also says he is “honoured” to have one by his side.
“For Ronan to sign on for another three years is a source of great pride to us,” he says, before laughing as he imagined O’Gara’s reaction to the qualifying statement that followed. “But what’s important for the type of president that I am - and I’ll say it carefully because maybe Ronan won’t be happy to hear it! - I’m here to make sure that Stade Rochelais lasts.
“Teams, coaches, players and presidents come and go. But the institution should remain and that’s my responsibility. It’s up to Ronan to look after the team and the sporting side of things so that the club gets the best results possible for the happiness of everyone - and his too, in particular.”
Whatever happens in front of the rarity of paying spectators at Twickenham on Saturday, this will go down as a groundbreaking campaign for La Rochelle. Second in the Top 14, they are guaranteed to be fighting for a first ever French championship - when table toppers Toulouse could again stand in their way.
The biggest match the 2019 Challenge Cup runners-up has ever been involved in is worthy reward for Merling’s vision and steady hand, but it is not - as he points out – the club’s most significant.
“The final of the Champions Cup brings a lot of pleasure and prestige,” he said. “It brings a lot to the club which, by being in the final, will take on a new dimension. But we had some very different moments where the future of the club was in danger, when we played a match where we are at risk of being relegated or tried to get promoted. In matches like that the future of the club – not the team – is at stake.”
With Merling celebrating 30 years as president and the ambitious O’Gara to have more influence next season, the future of La Rochelle has hardly looked brighter.
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