With a different way of winning, Ronan O'Gara eyes late run to Top 14 play offs

La Rochelle win their fourth game in five to continue a late season surge. 'If we hadn’t won here, our dream of winning the Brennus would have been over' reckoned ROG

GOOD JOB: La Rochelle head coach Ronan O'Gara congratulates his rookie Russian flanker Kirill Fraindt after victory over Racing 92 at the Paris La Defense Arena. Pic: Geoffroy van der Hasselt, Getty Images.

Sunday night’s tight 24-26 win at Racing 92 improved La Rochelle’s Top 14 expectations enough for manager Ronan O’Gara to publicly speculate about a post-season run for the Bouclier de Brennus.

In recent weeks, one player after another has raised the prospect of qualifying for the play-off phase during media interviews. Last week, French international backrow Oscar Jegou said he thought La Rochelle could be ‘unstoppable’ if they reached the post-season knockout phase.

But the staff have, to a coach, carefully deflected whenever the question was raised. With good reason. Before kick-off on Sunday at a venue where they had never won, La Rochelle were ninth in the table, six points adrift of their seventh-placed hosts, who were defending an unbeaten home record.

La Rochelle’s entire campaign was on a knife-edge. Defeat would have killed their remaining post-season ambitions stone dead, leaving them – with Champions Cup semi-finalists Toulon, Munster’s conquerors Castres, Bayonne and Lyon – in the unwanted dead-rubber phase with three regular season matches to play.

But, a first-ever win at La Defense Arena – their fourth victory in five Top 14 games – allowed O’Gara to break cover and admit that a top-six finish was ‘possible’.

“If we hadn’t won here, our dream of [winning] the Brennus would have been over,” he said. “We’re still in it – that’s all. I think it’s possible to finish in the top six, and as long as there’s hope, I’ll devote my time to this fine group of players.” 

O’Gara’s logic is faultless. The win has provisionally tightened La Rochelle’s grip on Racing’s coat tails, but that’s all. They have climbed to eighth, three points behind Patrice Collazo’s side, and six adrift of Bordeaux in the last of the play-off places.

ANOTHER BLOW: La Rochelle flanker Matthias Haddad is stretchered off at the Paris La Defense Arena.

What happens over the next three domestic weekends is the only game in town, and the odds remain against La Rochelle. Two of their last three matches are at home to top-six opposition. They host leaders Toulouse at Stade Marcel Deflandre next Sunday and – after a trip to bottom-of-the-table Montauban, where anything less than five points would be considered a failure – entertain Stade Francais, currently fourth, on June 6, when all seven final round Top 14 matches kick off simultaneously.

“Our only ambition is to be in the top six after the Stade Francais match,” O’Gara said.

The race for the Top 14 play-offs tightened rapidly in recent weeks. With three matches to play, Toulouse have a top-six finish in the bag. The rest of the top six – Montpellier, Pau, Stade Francais, Clermont and Bordeaux – are jockeying for final positions, while the last two in particular are looking to hold off the covetous attentions of Racing and La Rochelle.

What adds credence to O’Gara’s top-six hopes is the fact that Racing and Bordeaux’s run-ins are even harder. After Toulon at home on Saturday, Racing head to fifth-placed Clermont, then host Toulouse on the last day of the season; Bordeaux entertain Perpignan the weekend before defending their Champions Cup title against Leinster in Bilbao, then travel to Toulon, before a final round outing at home to Clermont.

Even Clermont – away at Pau next weekend, who are the only side still unbeaten at home this season, before their back-to-back games against Racing and Bordeaux – aren’t clear of danger. Any slip-up now could be a campaign-killer.

Despite the now-public hope garnered by their recent uptick in form, not everything in La Rochelle’s Top 14 garden is rosy. Their third league win on the bounce, their fifth on the road this season, came at a cost as the injury curse that has plagued them all season struck again. They lost winger Dillyn Leyds to a season-ending shoulder injury and centre Ulupano Seuteni in the first-half in Nanterre.

And backrow Matthias Haddad-Victor — who only recently returned to action after a lengthy spell on the sidelines with a brain injury — was stretchered off early in the second period after landing on his head following a tackle.

They had set a punishing pace at La Defense. Knowing they couldn’t take on Racing directly, they opted to go round rather than through them – reviving O’Gara’s KBA (Keep Ball Alive) policy of old in a swirl of offloading movement. Time after time, they shipped the ball wide quickly, and sought to profit from stretches in the hosts’ defence.

It was, O’Gara confirmed, an evolving gameplan. “We’re currently with a slightly different team, a different way of playing,” he said.

“It was good for rugby that the team in yellow scored because we played proper rugby. Racing played to their strengths. Their strength is direct, it’s brutal. But well done to my players for holding their own in the physical battle. It’s good, but it’s just the start of something.

“We’ve been working on this for many months, but people only seem to have noticed our improvement over the last month — simply because we’ve had [key] players [back] on the pitch. Before that, we had a disastrous injury list.”