THE MAIN EVENT won’t kick-off until later this evening but the Aviva Stadium might have already seen the performance of the weekend during a busy Friday at the Dublin venue.
You sensed there was a bit of mischief about Ronan O’Gara yesterday as soon as he entered the Aviva Stadium press room wearing a bright red tracksuit top, a sartorial decision made all the more entertaining by the fact the rest of the travelling La Rochelle group were dressed in black.
After an engaging and typically insightful Q&A session where the La Rochelle director of rugby dipped between English and French, O’Gara joined his team out on the Aviva Stadium turf for their Captain’s Run, taking part in a one-man crossbar challenge and catching up with familiar faces – including a jog across the pitch to hug the groundsman – while his players stretched, ran about a bit, and generally just looked to be enjoying themselves.
As was the case before last year’s decider in Marseille, the La Rochelle group looked far more relaxed in their approach than Leinster, who ran through the early part of their Captain’s Run with a greater level of precision and detail, a day after a nicely spiky training session at UCD.
It’s possible there’s nothing much to read into the different approaches from both sides but over the course of the week, it’s been harder and harder to escape the sense the pressure is all on Leinster ahead of today’s Heineken Champions Cup final [KO 4.45pm, RTÉ/BT Sport/ITV].
In his own pre-match press conference, Leo Cullen told his players to embrace that pressure. It’s about the only option they have. A win today, in front of a sold-out Dublin crowd, would finally erase the ghosts of 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, and send the departing Stuart Lancaster and Johnny Sexton out on a high. Defeat would signal two straight seasons without a trophy and, somewhat remarkably, just one Champions Cup title across the past 11 years.
All season the expectation around this group has been sky-high as they breezed their way to today’s final, but they haven’t faced a team like La Rochelle since the same opposition inflicted the most haunting Champions Cup defeat of the Leo Cullen/Stuart Lancaster era last May. With 78 minutes on the clock, Leinster were four points up and just moments away from reaching the promised land. Then Arthur Retiere stretched an arm over the line, Ihaia West knocked over the extras and O’Gara’s already rising stock skyrocketed.
So what’s changed? The province go into the game without the services of Sexton but still, they feel they are in a better place than they were 12 months ago.
A number of the squad underperformed in last year’s final, with Caelan Doris and Hugo Keenan both admitting to being frustrated with their displays in Marseille during the pre-match build-up this week. Both players head into today’s encounter playing the best rugby of their careers, and the same can be said for the likes of Garry Ringrose, James Ryan, Jamison Gibson-Park and Dan Sheehan, to name a few.
Their attack has also evolved. O’Gara is sure the Leinster attack coach, Andrew Goodman – an old friend from the Corkman’s Crusaders days – has kept “something up his sleeve” for this game and it’s also been notable that the attacking variations around tap-and-go penalties which proved so fruitful for Leinster earlier in the season have been kept in the back pocket recently. Watch this space.
Having perhaps been overly cautious in Marseille last year – failing to score a try and turning down the corner for the posts across a series of tantalisingly kickably penalties – they’ll need to bring more ambition to their approach. When you boast the most impressive attacking system in Europe, it makes sense to play to those strengths. Yet they’ll also need to be deadly accurate at the breakdown, and the presence of Doris at six in a backrow which also includes Josh van der Flier and Jack Conan indicates they are keen to match La Rochelle’s power game early on, before an injection of energy off the bench to see them home.
La Rochelle have physically bettered Leinster across the last two seasons but they are so much more than brute enforcers. The French side have plenty of flair in their backline and as evident at the Stade Velodrome, even for such big men, fitness isn’t a concern.
And just like their boss, these players seem to embrace pressure. O’Gara has forged his team into ruthless competitors but they still enjoy their rugby.
“We do have fun but we’ve high standards,” O’Gara explained.
“We have ambition to do something special in these players’ lives. I’m not really interested in having a job. I love what I do, we love what we do, we get chance to play for each other in the final of a European Cup.
It doesn’t get any better, doesn’t get any bigger, we’re in the home of Leinster, it’s a really daunting task but a great challenge but one we want to succeed in.
“We going in there (today) and we’ll either grow or shrink. What I’ve seen from my boys is they love it, they care for each other, they’ve prepared all season for this game and it’s to be attacked than be feared.
“As a player I would have been damn nervous, as a coach I’m extremely excited about it. Where else do you want to be? It’s a Heineken Cup final in Dublin and we’re ready to go.”
And still, if the defending champions were to go back-to-back today, the result would largely be viewed as an upset given the opposition, and the stage.
O’Gara didn’t spend much time talking about Leinster, outlining his respect for the province but preferring to focus on his own team. They too seem to have grown since last year, with a more competitive squad who appear to be hitting top form just as it matters most. For the third year running, they might well just prove a bridge too far for Leinster.
“They are exceptional opposition,” said Garry Ringrose. “They seem to go from strength to strength every time we play.
“I think they have a stronger squad again this year with some of the new additions. So I mean the difference for us, we still prepared as best we can, to come up with a plan to try and stop them.
“Obviously we have been unsuccessful twice. So hopefully third time lucky but they’re just a great team, and we know we have to be at our best if we want to beat them.
“It’s a bit of an experience, it is great being at home here, and hopefully having a few more Leinster supporters that could get behind us in those tough moments, which I’ve no doubt will be there against the quality side that La Rochelle are.
“If it is a tough day they can help us along as well.”
And there will be periods where life gets tough for Leinster. Whether or not they now have the ability to survive those storms has been the big question lurking in the background all year. Today we’ll get the answer in a final that pits the two best teams in Europe against each other. Just the way it should be.
LEINSTER: Hugo Keenan; Jimmy O’Brien, Garry Ringrose, Robbie Henshaw, James Lowe; Ross Byrne, Jamison Gibson-Park; Andrew Porter, Dan Sheehan, Tadhg Furlong; Ross Molony, James Ryan (captain); Caelan Doris, Josh van der Flier, Jack Conan.
Replacements: Ronan Kelleher, Cian Healy, Michael Ala’alatoa, Jason Jenkins, Ryan Baird, Luke McGrath, Ciaran Frawley, Charlie Ngatai.
LA ROCHELLE: Brice Dulin; Dillyn Leyds, UJ Seuteni, Jonathan Danty, Raymond Rhule; Antoine Hastoy, Tawera Kerr Barlow; Reda Wardi, Pierre Bourgarit, Uini Atonio; Romain Sazy, Will Skelton; Paul Boudehent, Levani Botia, Grégory Alldritt (captain).
Replacements: Quentin Lespiaucq Brettes, Joel Sclavi, Georges Henri Colombe, Thomas Lavault, Remi Bourdeau, Ultan Dillane, Thomas Berjon, Jules Favre.
Referee: Jaco Peyper (South Africa)
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