BULLY FOR YOU
As O’gara touches down for week in Cork, Nienaber warns Blues won’t be intimidated this time around
JACQUES NIENABER claims that La Rochelle won’t bully Leinster out of the Champions Cup this time.
The defending champions settled down in Cork yesterday after the long-haul trip back from their last 16 victory over Stormers in Cape Town.
That La Rochelle have chosen to head straight to Ireland – and to Ronan O’gara’s home city – has piqued interest as Europe’s top two prepare for their latest showdown.
On arrival, O’gara sarcastically posted on X ‘Home sweet home’ under a picture of a rainy Cork Airport.
And, heading to the team coach with the five-star Fota Island Resort the next port of call, La Rochelle’s head coach admitted a nap was the first item on the agenda after the Cape Town-paris-cork marathon journey.
“I haven’t been here for a long time,” said O’gara. “The boys are buzzing as well so it’s very exciting.”
Adding to the sense of giddiness was the brief Instagram post from the team’s Ultan Dillane, the ex-connacht lock (below) who grew up in Tralee.
Dillane’s video showed The Fields of Athenry playing on the bus en route to the hotel.
Meanwhile, at Leinster’s UCD base, Blues’ senior coach Nienaber explained O’gara’s thinking through the prism of his own World Cup-winning experience with South Africa.
One, logistics – that it cut out hours of travel.
Two, avoiding the big media pressure at home – La Rochelle have decided not to do any press duties until Friday at the Aviva.
And three, making better connections with players by keeping everyone together for the week.
Nienaber added: “If he gets a lift in Cork, or his team gets a lift in Cork, that I would not know.
“He’s the guy that would know better than I but, from being in that situation before with the Boks, we’ve done it numerous times in the Rugby Championship.”
In his role as South Africa’s senior coach, Nienaber had studied the footage from the last two finals and the 2022 semi-final that saw La Rochelle beat Leinster in the knowledge that the Boks would face Ireland in last year’s World Cup and possibly France after the pool stages.
So it proved. But he knows that the sense is that O’gara’s side bullied Leinster in the last two finals, eventually pounding them into submission.
“Yes, there will be a narrative that they are bigger, they are heavier, they are bigger bullies,” said Nienaber. “But if you look at the reality and at the size of players in the Irish national side compared to other national sides around the world, in the tier one nations there isn’t a bigger, heavier side than Ireland.
“I would say the secret of any knockout game is you’ve got to be accurate in what you do, it’s accuracy that gets you across the line. Every knockout game is the biggest one of the season because that’s the thing, there is no tomorrow if you lose. “Luckily there’s another competition you will go in but you will face the same pressure and importance when you go into the quarter-finals of ERC, semi-final and final.
“It is definitely the biggest game of the season for the organisation because it’s the quarter-final of Europe.”