Ronan O'Gara: La Rochelle not 'anywhere near our potential'
La Rochelle head coach Ronan O'Gara. Picture: ©INPHO/Nick Elliott
The mood was light in the Aviva Stadium. Ronan O’Gara was leaning up against a pitchside barrier chatting to some of his staff, his players were playing a game of touch rugby across the width of the pitch, and Uini Atonio even tried a 50:22 just for the fun of it.
Atonio is the clichéd gentle giant, massively destructive on the field of play, quietly-spoken off it. He spoke gently afterwards but the words carried a weight when Leinster’s talk this week of their Champions Cup “obsession” was shared with him.
“Look, we're a great team with a lot of young boys coming through, we're looking to strive for the best. I know Leinster has been looking for that trophy for the last three or four years, but if they want to go for that trophy they have to go through us.” O’Gara’s delivery was similar, calm but with purpose.
He touched on the stutters that La Rochelle have had in this World Cup-interrupted season and the fact that his side has not “near hit anything like our straps”. This was countered quickly with a reminder of what they can do when closer to their best.
For all the focus on the last two finals and the manner in which the French side pipped the Irish province, O’Gara went back to the semi-final meeting in the 2020/21 season when his side were 16 points to the good before a late consolation try massaged the scorelines.
“That for us has to be the goal, that we have to be better at our rugby. I don’t think we have a problem with our mentality but we have to be better at our rugby.”
He spoke up his team’s threats with and without the ball, his excitement at seeing the players putting the pieces together this afternoon, and he touched again on the motivation involved as they go about chasing a three-in-a-row.
“We want to go again,” he explained. “It’s deeper, it’s touchable, so the reality in our language is there is a team in our way tomorrow, it happens to Leinster. And after that there will be two others. So, with all due respect, it's an opposition we need to try take care of tomorrow to get to where we want to go.
“They have their ambitions, and we respect that, but this team has done immense things and I don’t think we're anywhere near our potential, so that excites me, but we're aware that home advantage is huge and we need to be near our best.” How much potential?
He made that clear when reminded of Ireland’s huge Six Nations win over France in Marseille earlier this year and the confidence that win could provide to so many of the Leinster players who were on duty in the Orange Velodrome that memorable evening.
“It was a statement performance but there's very little linkage between it and, obviously from and our point of view … we try to be as good if not better than the French team.
“That's has to be the goal of my team, you know, because we have the best of international players and we have the best of French players, so we should be as good as any Test team.” People say the same of Leinster.
It has all the potential for another barnstorming instalment in a rivalry which O’Gara said has been so, so good for this imperfect tournament, and it was hard to argue too when he touched on the hoary old ‘tiny margins’ theory.
Coming to Cork last Monday was a big deal in that sense alone. Twelve hours were shaved off their travel plans, immeasurable benefit was mined from the goodwill they encountered in their head coach’s old stomping ground.
O’Gara went through the week’s events again yesterday and about how it was nice “just to see that you mean something” to your home town. The hope is that the experience can go some way to offsetting the air miles that have taken them this far.
And if Cork felt like home then the Aviva is hardly unfamiliar territory either. Last May’s final defeat of Leinster came six months after a stunning first-half performance against Ulster in Ballsbridge in a game played behind closed doors.
“We were not as cohesive as we’d like to be [against Stormers last week] but we can hopefully skip a few steps by getting a good buzz by arriving in an unbelievable stadium with a full house and an unbelievably good sod that will bring back all the good memories of last May.”
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