Ronan O'Gara: Sam Prendergast merits the buzz and has a huge future

The La Rochelle boss saw the Leinster and Ireland out half in action on Sunday.

Prendergast of Leinster celebrates after kicking a penalty during the Investec Champions Cup Pool 2 match against Stade Rochelais. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Few people are as familiar with the job required of an Ireland out-half, and of the men currently tasked with auditioning and filling this role for the national team, as Ronan O’Gara.

The La Rochelle coach’s time in that famous No.10 jersey spanned 14 years. He made that shirt his own for long stretches. For others he had David Humphreys for company, or a young Johnny Sexton to contend with.

Long removed from these shores on his fascinating coaching journey, the Munster legend continues to keep a trained eye on the situation back home and he has made frequent observations as to the current order of merit time and again.

It was in his Irish Examiner column in 2021 when he revealed that an approach to bring Jack Crowley from Munster to La Rochelle had been rebuffed. Crowley had impressed him with the Ireland U20s. O’Gara saw talent and liked his physical and mental abilities.

“Am I disappointed? Bloody right I am. This boy is a talent,” he wrote then.

O’Gara hasn’t always been on the money with Irish tens.

Key to his strategy when his Top 14 side pitched up to Dublin to face Dublin in last season’s Investec Champions Cup quarter-final was Ross Byrne who he planned to “derail” only for the out-half to ‘turn everything in to gold’.

Byrne, he said in these pages after the event, “is much better with the ball that I gave him credit for” and O’Gara was happy to admit after Sunday’s latest defeat to the Irish province that he has had to upgrade his thoughts on Sam Prendergast too.

The 21-year-old has usurped Byrne at Leinster and Crowley with Ireland this season, his preternatural calm belying his youth and his first start in France, a gruelling 16-14 win, was completed in much the same manner.

No fuss, job done.

Munster’s Jack Crowley in action against Saracens. Picture: ©INPHO/Billy Stickland

“He is an impressive young player, that’s for certain,” said O’Gara, “and, as I said previously, I thought there was probably a buzz about him that wasn’t necessary. But after what I saw against Bristol [last month] he merits all that and he deserves all that.

“[On Sunday] I don’t think he missed a kick, did he? And none of them were easy. And he managed the game well. He has a huge future. You just have to go after a 20-year old (sic) because he is 20, you know?

“When I was 20 and playing in that position, what you feel as a 20-year old, it’s not easy. So, he won that game [at the weekend] in terms of against me because I didn’t get much change out of him.” 

No position on the pitch gets scrutinised as much as out-half. Crowley knows this better than anyone. Praised to the hilt as he assumed the reins for Ireland from Sexton, he is now having holes picked in his game as he looks to hit top form again.

On Sunday, it was La Rochelle’s Antoine Hastoy under the glare of that spotlight. The 27-year has old has come up with some massive plays for the Maritimes but he has had better days than this third defeat in a row to the Irish province.

Hastoy missed two penalties and a conversion in a two-point defeat. He also had a late drop goal attempt blocked down by a charging Josh van der Flier having delivered a sublime crossfield kick for Dillyn Leyd’s 66th-minute try.

It was a brilliant intervention by van der Flier. O’Gara broke it down with a clear eye, how they probably didn’t expect to make such a big gain off the previous phase, and how Hastoy needed to stand another seven or eight yards back to negate the charge.

“That’s the way we control, hopefully, we get to show it again.” 

The head coach also opined how, “if we had the balls in the last play to kick a cross-field kick then we’re in, but it’s a big play for a guy… that’s the time to do it, in a pool game”.

If that would take courage then the same could be said for another shot at a drop goal that seemed to be the blindingly obvious route as the clock went into the red. Hastoy, however, never looked to position himself in the pocket.

Instead, the out-half chose to make himself available on the blindside as phase followed phase and it was actually his forward pass that brought the game to an end and confirmed Leinster’s second win at Stade Marcel Deflandre in 13 months.

This is the game at ten: tight margins and careering perceptions based on split-second decisions in the white heat of rugby’s idiosyncratic battle. Hastoy, Crowley and Byrne have been burned by that before. Prendergast will, too. They all have.