WHEN YOU TAKE a stroll around La Rochelle, it feels like everyone is part of the rugby club. The flags and posters and bunting are all over the place. The big club shop is always busy and the local pride in what Stade Rochelais are now achieving is palpable.
It’s a small city of close to 80,000 people and they’re still only getting used to the success. The 2022 Champions Cup victory was the first major trophy their rugby team had ever won, so it’s all new even if they backed it up last season and came close to a maiden Top 14 title.
What’s special about Stade Rochelais is how involved the community is. They’re not run by one dictator-like money man. Instead, the club’s budget – which is reportedly more than €30 million per season, taking in the salary cap of €10.7 million – is made up of investment from a vast array of local companies and businesspeople.
The club website now lists 672 different partners and though their levels of financial contribution vary, it means all of these local businesses are genuinely part of the journey. Stade Rochelais is a well-managed organisation and their long-term strategic approach has been patient and intelligent. The current success is no accident.
There’s also the investment from local people through their phenomenal support of Ronan O’Gara’s team on match days. Any Leinster fans lucky enough to be visiting tomorrow are in for a real treat. If you’re not, make sure to add a trip to the 16,000-capacity Stade Marcel Deflandre to your rugby bucket list.
Stade Rochelais could have gone bigger when they expanded the Marcel Deflandre back in 2017 but the club was keen to avoid having empty patches in the stands for lower-profile games. They felt it was better to have a medium-sized venue that would always be packed out.
The stadium in La Rochelle has been sold out for more than 80 consecutive home games. So that’s around 20% of the city’s population in the Marcel Deflandre pretty much every second weekend. There are 13,000 season ticket holders and the club could sell the other 3,000 spaces in the blink of an eye if they wanted. There’s a five-year waiting list to get one of those priceless season tickets.
As Leinster will learn tomorrow, the singing and chanting are relentless on matchdays in Stade Marcel Deflandre. Fans queue for hours before kick-off to get in and launch the big atmosphere.
Tomorrow will be Leinster’s first real experience of it. They have played in La Rochelle before, losing to the French side in the Champions Cup semi-finals in 2021, but there were no fans allowed in due to the pandemic. Even still, Leo Cullen’s men got a flavour of the noise that La Rochelle fans can bring.
That day, the Stade Rochelais diehards lined up outside Stade Marcel Deflandre to roar their team in, as well as doing their best to intimidate Leinster.
“It was behind closed doors but when you got off the bus you got the sense that you are going into a hostile environment,” recalls Cullen.
And the Leinster boss expects it on a grander scale tomorrow, both off and on the pitch.
“We know what ROG is like,” says Cullen. “He builds up the siege mentality in his group. That’s in his DNA, isn’t it?
“Chip on shoulder, all the stuff he would talk about.
“That’s what we’re heading into. We need to make sure we’re prepared for that and get excited by the challenge of it as well.”
They’ll hope for a few good pockets of blue dotted around the stadium and there’s every reason for Leinster fans to have booked this trip. First and foremost, the rivalry is very real after three defeats to La Rochelle in three consecutive seasons.
But there’s also the perk of La Rochelle being a beautiful place. The Vieux Port is the picturesque old port area with plenty of charm and history, its piers lined with restaurants and bars. The eye-catching Tour Saint-Nicolas is one of the three medieval towers guarding the port.
With a big food market a short stroll away and more culinary gems dotted around the city, it’s certainly a good trip for lovers of French food and wine.
Rugby is visibly the dominant sport, helped by the fact that there isn’t much competition. The biggest football club are well down the tiers of the French system, although the Stade Rochelais basketball side – they’re part of the same organisation as the rugby team – are currently flying high in France’s second division. But there’s no doubt La Rochelle is rugby country. Leinster go deep into enemy territory tomorrow.
