VALUABLE LESSON
Regrets for O’Gara and La Rochelle but journey will stand to them
THE agony of days like this is just part of the journey to glory. You’d imagine Ronan O’Gara conveyed a message along those lines to his crestfallen squad in the losing dressing room deep in the throes of Twickenham yesterday.
O’Gara knows all about defeats like this from his playing days. He learned some harsh lessons in this stadium more than two decades ago. La Rochelle will have plenty of regrets. They have plenty to build on, however.
O’Gara will be stepping into the front of house role with Jono Gibbes off to Clermont in the summer and there are solid foundations here. This was no on-off. We’ll be seeing plenty of O’Gara and his squad in the years ahead.
Whatever about the personnel and coaching capital among this group, their character was impressive. The fact that the result hung in the balance right up until the final play said a lot about the fight in this group.
They will wonder how they would have fared had Levani Botia not saw red after 28 minutes.
The Fijian centre’s tackle on Maxime Medard drew winces from the 10,000-strong crowd in attendance. It was a sending off all day. Botia knew as much long before referee Luke Pearce and his assistants had drawn the same conclusion.
In his fledgling coaching years, O’Gara was on the backroom team at Racing 92 in a Top14 final in 2016. The Corkman was running the defensive brief at the Parisian club back then. After 18 minutes, they would find themselves down to 14 men after Maxime Machenaud was sent off for – you guessed it – a dangerous tackle.
O’Gara recalled the events of that fateful day at the Nou Camp earlier this week. Racing would batten down the hatches and secure a famous result. There was plenty of the same grit yesterday but La Rochelle could not repeat the same feat in London. Still, it should make following O’Gara’s men all the more interesting next season. Unsurprisingly, it was ROG-Mania in pre-match build-up.
BT Sport assembled quite the box office cast to give their views on the Corkman in a feature prior to kick-off, with Brian O’Driscoll, Dan Carter, Scott Robertson, David Humphreys and Alan Quinlan waxing lyrical on the man himself.
He was clearly buzzing before kick-off. Speaking to Virgin Media, O’Gara was beaming.
‘We played the final the night before our first final,’ O’Gara recalled, citing Munster’s 9-8 loss to Northampton at this same venue some 21 years ago.
There were no shortage of nerves from both sides in the opening quarter.
This was by no means a classic. Save for the drama of Botia’s red card, there was little to stir the soul across the opening 40 minutes.
A kicking duel between Romain Ntamack and Ihaia West saw La Rochelle edge the contest 12-9 as both sides headed into the sheds for the half-time team talks.
There were so many box office names across both team sheets but this was a day for the big boys. Toulouse had enough of them to get the job done with former All Black Jerome Kainto, at age 38, and 37-yearold Samoan giant Joe Tekori putting in huge shifts. Cheslin Kolbe barely saw the ball all afternoon. The one time he managed to find some runway – thanks to a brilliant break from Antoine Dupont – he was cover tackled by Geoffrey Doumayrou into touch.
Ntamack wasn’t having the best of games either. The Toulouse No10 is going to be a big player on this stage and with France for a long time to come, but he lacked conviction at times. Still, he has the class to break the game open. He delivered the match-turning moment with a sumptuous skip pass which proved the catalyst for Juan Cruz Mallia to cross on the hour mark. Ntamack would soon edge Toulouse into a 10-point lead with another penalty strike.
Tawera Kerr-Barlow would snipe his way through for a well-taken try to set up a grandstand finish but La Rochelle had too much ground to make up in the end. Too much went against them on the day. The red card. West’s wayward kicking. A lack of composure at times.
They will learn from all of this.
Toulouse, meanwhile, made history with a fifth title - the first club to achieve such a defeat in this tournament’s history. It was their first since 2010. They are back in the big time again.
That’s the worry for the Irish provinces, going forward. The French teams are very much a force again. And one of them has an Irishman at the heart of it.