THE BEST OF ENEMIES
Familiarity might breed contempt, but Pumas’ coach has won respect of rivals the world over for his passion and ability
RUGBY at the elite end is a small and familiar environment. Over the course of a career, players and coaches come to know opponents, often very well.
And familiarity can put quite the edge on some relationships. The one between Ireland and Argentina ended up as sharp as razor-wire in the 2000s.
Enmity between Felipe Contepomi and a handful of Munster players was one reason, and the ability of the Pumas to beat Ireland on the days that counted was another.
Wins at the World Cups in 1999 and 2007 for the Argentineans plunged Irish rugby into spiralling crises on both occasions.
Argentina’s new head coach Mario Ledesma started in both games, his long and honourable career encompassing four World Cups and 84 caps in total.
Ledesma’s history with the Irish coach Joe Schmidt has been a point of interest this week as he brings his team to Lansdowne Road on Saturday.
Schmidt was an assistant coach to the great Clermont side that in 2010 finally won a French championship after years of trying. Ledesma was 37 at the time of that victory, and a veteran inspiration to the side.
But it is another former Leinster coach that put Ledesma on a track that resulted in his appointment as Argentina’s head coach during the summer.
Michael Cheika hired Ledesma as his forwards’ specialist at Stade Francais after the latter retired following the 2011 World Cup. As he did with Jono Gibbes, Cheika saw in a tough, crusty player the makings of a good trainer.
Cheika’s years at the Parisian club were not a success, but Ledesma made such a good impression that he was offered the job of replacing his boss.
He declined, but moved to Montpellier to work with Fabien Galthie at the conclusion of the 2011/2012 season.
In January 2015, he reunited with Cheika at the Waratahs in Super Rugby, and when Cheika was given the Australian job the following summer, he brought Ledesma with him.
Within months, Ledesma would face the emotional wrench of coaching against Argentina in a World Cup semi-final. If it took a toll but it didn’t affect his coaching. Australia won 29-15.
Before that match, Australian loose forward Michael Hooper spoke about the impact Ledesma had made with the Wallabies.
Though appointed a general forwards’ coach, he worked particularly hard on the team’s scrums, an area of the game that had been a chronic Australian weakness for years.
In one of his first training sessions, after calling a scrum, Ledesma hit the ground and wiggled into the middle of the set-piece.
‘He was crawling through the middle and I was just thinking, “What is this guy doing?”’ remembered Hooper. ‘That was one of the first days in. I thought it was going to collapse, but the boys managed to keep it up.
‘He’s an integral part of this team and has been since day dot.’
It was in October of last year that Ledesma told Cheika he wanted to return to Argentina to take over the Jaguares, the country’s Super Rugby franchise.
‘I was pretty devastated when he told me but I understood what the story was,’ said Cheika. ‘I want him to succeed.’ Australian scrum half Will Genia said he cried as Ledesma told the squad his news.
‘I got a bit teary when he got up and spoke because he’s such a passionate guy. He’s done an amazing job in the last couple of years since the World Cup and we’ll miss him,’ Genia said.
Ledesma only got to spend one season in charge of the Jaguares, the team instituted after the 2015 World Cup in part to assist Argentina in keeping talented players at home. They enjoyed their best season yet, winning nine of 17 matches and reaching the quarter-finals of the tournament.
By the time the Jaguares lost that quarter-final last July, Daniel Hourcade had left as Argentina’s head coach. He was the man in charge when they beat Ireland so thoroughly in the last eight of the 2015 World Cup, but in 28 matches thereafter, the Pumas won only six.
Ledesma was the outstanding candidate to succeed him, and promptly led Argentina to two wins in their six Rugby Championship meetings. They beat South Africa in Mendoza and then won away to Australia, before losing a match they should have won to the latter in their last match of the campaign.
Those performances left Ledesma’s old friend Cheika under huge pressure, but they also pointed to the old warrior’s ability to drill a side effectively.
It is a lesson Schmidt will certainly have absorbed in preparation for this match. The old, edgy passion still burns in Ledesma, too, though.
He is perhaps best remembered in Irish rugby for the way he confronted Munster and Ireland outhalf Ronan O’Gara after a fractious Irish win over the Argentinians in November 2004.
O’Gara scored a late drop goal to win the game, before celebrating by jumping and clicking his heels together.
At a function after the match, Ledesma made straight for the Munster man.
‘From where I was standing it looked like he wanted to kill me and I wasn’t hanging around to test my hunch,’ O’Gara would later recall.
In a career distinguished by good decision-making, that was one of his best.