Ronan O'Gara expresses frustration at Toulon return, and La Rochelle's approach to same

WATCHING BRIEF: La Rochelle's head coach Ronan O'Gara ahead of their French Top14 win over Racing 92. Now he has to ponder what approach to take to a rescheduled fixture in Toulon when all other sides will be having a rest week.. Pic: Xavier Leoty, Getty.

A frustrated Ronan O’Gara had something on his mind after his La Rochelle side claimed a bonus-point 33-6 win over Racing 92 on Sunday and climbed to sixth in the Top 14 table.

It wasn’t his side’s performance: it’s hard to argue with five points in the bag, after all. And they were the second team in as many games to stop Racing crossing their tryline, so it wasn’t their defence. They were scarcely stretched without the ball all evening.

Yes, they could have played better in certain periods, but there are always things to work on in rugby.

And, no, it wasn’t a ‘big’ performance. It will never be much more than a footnote in club annals. It didn’t need to be. The Rochelais played smart, realistic rugby — demonstrated by captain Gregory Alldritt when he opted for a game-ending penalty shot at goal with the clock in the red at the end of the match, rather than look for the crowd-pleasing fourth try from 7m or so out The game had been won, and won well enough. There was no need to take even the slightest risk with more challenges ahead. Head into the dressing room, job done. It was a cool-headed pragmatic decision by the captain, at the end of an overdue full-bore personal 80-minute performance that would gave France coach Fabien Galthie a happy problem in the lead-up to next weekend’s November Test against South Africa.

It was the immediate future, and one particular challenge that dominated O’Gara’s thinking after the match. While 12 clubs started their three-week international break after this weekend’s games, his side — shorn of many of their internationals — are at seventh-placed Toulon next Saturday, hours before France get their Autumn international party started, for a rescheduled third round match, which had been postponed in September after a violent storm broke shortly before kick-off and flooded the area around Stade Mayol.

“We have one week less vacation time,” the La Rochelle manager grumbled – and he raised the prospect of forfeiting the game to give his players their full holiday allocation.

“It’s a disaster because we have to go to Toulon again. We’re the ones being punished. I don’t know why a pitch wasn’t available to play the next day. It’s not our responsibility, but we’re the ones who have to make the sacrifices.

“I’m going to ask the players when we get back to the locker room if we’re going [to Toulon] or if we’re taking a vacation.

“Lyon conceded [over] 50 at Mayol, Racing 45 — maybe it’s better to just accept the defeat and take two weeks off like the other teams. I’m going to sound out my players because it’s going to be a tough match.” 

O’Gara’s is a savant at column-inch dominating comments. A few weeks ago, he publicly questioned his career choices following a heavy loss at Montpellier. In February, during La Rochelle’s 105-day winless run, he asked whether the squad would perform better without him.

He’s been ‘locked in a cage upstairs’ during one of a number of touchline bans, and suggested former scrum-half Tawera Kerr-Barlow might try out a hurling glove so he could play in the 2022 Champions Cup final with broken bones in his hand.

He’s not the first to suggest forfeiting a match that would have to be played in less-than ideal circumstances, either. In 2014, then-Toulon boss Bernard Laporte threatened not to play a game against Castres to avoid jeopardising the health of the young players brought in to replace injured internationals. That game went ahead.

“No,” O’Gara grinned when journalists asked whether he’d discussed the prospect of forfeiting next Saturday’s match with club bosses. It’s unlikely, too, that he had spoken to the LNR, or broadcasters Canal Plus, who are busily promoting the rescheduled match before his public announcement.

So, this has all the hallmarks of an O’Gara rallying call to his few stripped-down, much-changed happy band of brothers, without their French internationals, their Georgian stars, and probably without key Australian and Fijian players. A Saint Crispin’s Day post-match press conference, if you will.

“Will the players decide whether to go to Toulon?” he asked. “Yes. Because you can’t go there without soldiers.

“I think we have momentum. I think we’re capable of doing something in Toulon. We might be able to get a point there. But if I talk like that, I’m a loser. And if I say I think we can win there, people will say I’m arrogant. So, what’s the solution? Forfeit?”

The game kicks off on Saturday afternoon. The preliminaries have already started.