WHILE IT’S TRUE La Rochelle haven’t quite looked themselves this season, Leinster aren’t paying too much attention to the form guide.
Knockout rugby is a different beast, and over the years La Rochelle have shown Leinster a thing or two about performing when the pressure is highest.
You could be forgiven for forgetting tomorrow’s meeting in Dublin is only a quarter-final [KO 5.30pm, RTÉ/TNT Sports]. For Leinster, it could well be the game that defines their season, while the back-to-back European champions have gone all-in in terms of their own preparation by camping up in Cork for the week. One wonders if they’d have gone to such lengths for any other opposition at this time of the year.
This has become the Champions Cup’s defining rivalry, and Saturday looks set to be another fascinating installment of the Leinster-La Rochelle story.
“I think we all know they are a different team when it comes to knockout rugby, so we are going to have to be at our best this weekend to take them,” says Leinster centre Robbie Henshaw, who has been there every step of the way.
Henshaw played the full 80 minutes when Leinster lost a 2021 Champions Cup semi-final to La Rochelle, and went the distance again for the 2022 final defeat in Marseille. He left the pitch with an injury 60 minutes into last year’s decider and delivered a big defensive shift when Leinster finally got some revenge in their pool stage meeting earlier this season.
The 30-year-old has a Champions Cup medal in his pocket from 2018, but the pain of recent seasons is what colours his view of this competition.
“When you experience winning this competition it is all you really think about,” he says.
“Like, watching it as a kid growing up, to experience winning it is like no other literally. So, yeah, I think this one is the one to win, it definitely is for us and for me personally it is the one we are always chasing.
It is an obsession. Within this club it is an obsession. It is huge. We are not shy about saying what we want to achieve and that definitely is the fifth star. It’s an obsession for everyone.”
Leinster are not the same team they were last season. While Johnny Sexton didn’t play in the 2023 final, his absence now is still significant, while the move to replace Stuart Lancaster with Jacques Nienaber was all designed towards getting over the line in Europe again.
Nienaber came to Leinster billed as a defensive mastermind but his work around Leinster’s mentality is equally important. The South African has a proven record of winning when it matters most and his work with the province has all been geared towards weeks like this, and perhaps even this opposition in particular.
Earlier this week the former Springbok coach dismissed the idea Leinster have been ‘bullied’ in this fixture previously and Henshaw tends to agree, seeing the problem as a mental question more than a physical one.
“I think it is pure mental fatigue, that is the area. Physically, we definitely were fine around that [last year].
“I think for us it’s probably being able to manage the period before half-time, the period just after half-time, and then the last 10 minutes.
“I suppose the last 10 minutes for us is probably the area where most importantly in the last two years in those finals, we didn’t probably manage as well as we could have. So those last few minutes are huge.
“And then last year, looking back we got a great start against them and let them back in and then probably sat back a little and didn’t keep attacking them, and that’s probably in our minds that we probably have to stay attacking for the 80 minutes and not sit back and not try and contain them.
“They’re a great team and under their coach they are unbelievable at finding a way to grind out a win or to get through, so I think that will be in our heads as well that they play to the final whistle and they have always found a way over the last few years.”
La Rochelle go into the game looking to keep their dream of three successive Champions Cup titles alive, while Leinster are trying to avoid being eliminated by the same opponent for the fourth year running.
Henshaw himself is in fine form this season, but admits Leinster will need to step things up from their round of 16 defeat of Leicester Tigers.
“There is a bit of pressure on us, obviously, from last weekend.
“I think coming off the pitch after the game against Leicester we know there are plenty of things to work on, plenty of things to fix up but it is good to be in that position rather than walking off the pitch and feeling like ‘we have done unbelievable here’ and walking into this week.
“So I think for us we know that we have to get better, but that gives us a bit of an edge for the week.”
