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Ronan O'Gara explains strategy behind La Rochelle visit to Cork

La Rochelle coach Ronan O'Gara (Photo by Xavier Leoty/AFP via Getty Images)

Ronan O’Gara has explained the strategy behind intriguingly basing his La Rochelle team in his native Cork ahead of Saturday’s Investec Champions Cup quarter-final against Leinster in Dublin.

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Cork to Dublin is a three-hour journey by bus but the former Munster and Ireland out-half preferred to take that approach for this weekend’s game rather than have his team travel from La Rochelle to the Irish capital before the last-eight fixture.

The back-to-back title holders, who defeated Leinster in the last two finals in Marseille and Dublin, played their round-of-16 tie in Cape Town last Saturday where they squeezed past the Stormers.

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After it was confirmed later that day that they would be away to Leinster in the next round, O’Gara actioned a plan he had come up with in conjunction with John O’Flynn, the general manager at the Fota Island resort, that would see La Rochelle fly to Cork on Monday from Paris rather than head home to the west coast of France to prepare for the latest clash with Leinster.

It was in a 2021 semi-final that the clubs ignited their now fascinating rivalry, La Rochelle winning that match and the two subsequent finals games in 2022 and 2023 before the Irish broke that pattern with a pool stage win last December in France.

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Investec Champions Cup
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40 - 13
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Now the die has been cast for the fifth instalment, a build-up added by O’Gara billeting his La Rochelle team in Munster territory before they head up the road to Leinster. Speaking with the Irish Examiner, the French club’s boss explained: “The reality that people don’t understand is to go to La Rochelle from Paris by bus is six hours, by train four plus whatever.

“We need to train if we want to try and do the business at the weekend. So if we were to go back to La Rochelle on Monday, we’d get back there at three or four o’clock without having slept for two days.

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“It means you can only train Tuesday, but one training session won’t be good enough to compete against Leinster, so we said we would come straight to Cork and train Tuesday and train Thursday and try and keep it as a normal championship week for knockout rugby on a Saturday. From that regard, it’s fascinating.

“You have 27 hours from Cape Town, Johannesburg to Paris with flights, with internal flights and waiting times. For me, there was no point in adding another 12 hours of travel to the week. Just eliminate that, so we said we would go straight from Paris to Cork.

“It’s important you try and make it as enjoyable, there’s enough suffering in this game. There is wonderful staff here, good facilities, and with the season the way it is with the World Cup and Six Nations, we needed time together.

“We never tick a box. We are very privileged, we enjoy what we do. We represent Stade Rochelais, I come from Cork and I’m very proud of that. I spent the best years of my life in the Munster jersey, Ireland jersey, Lions jersey.

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“I’m back home here to prepare for a game where we have a good chance of progressing where we think we have achieved a remarkable run of victories in knockout rugby. We want that to continue, but the support has blown us away.

“It’s been really surprising and top-class just meeting all the locals from Cork. You forget that when you unfortunately get taken into your own little bubble and are full of the importance of that on the west side of France but It has been an unbelievably powerful week in terms of stirring the emotions for sure.”

Away from training, the La Rochelle players and staff have made good use of their time checking out O’Gara’s hometown. “The boys were fascinated by the live trad session, and it’s good that they are seeing Cork at its finest,” he said, name-dropping the various places they have visited on their downtime in the city.

“I have been trying for years to get over because it’s my hometown, I’ve a fondness for Cork and the boys know all about that, about trying to bring them for pre-season camps.

“But with the way we have had late seasons and gone deep into competitions, we have never had the chance because the first game of the Top 14 starts five weeks after the final of the previous campaign.

“It was always in my head to get over. Over the years I’ve gotten to know John O’Flynn and once John O’Flynn is interested in making something happen, he is brilliant and has turned this week into a most enjoyable week off the pitch with a world-class facility, food, recovery.”

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3 Comments
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Bull Shark 251 days ago

Missed the part where he’s staying over with his mum.

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JW 2 hours ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.


Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about trying to make so the worst teams in it are not giving up when they are so far off the pace that we get really bad scorelines (when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together). I know it's not realistic to think those same exact teams are going to be competitive with a different model but I am inclined to think more competitive teams make it in with another modem. It's a catch 22 of course, you want teams to fight to be there next year, but they don't want to be there next year when theres less interest in it because the results are less interesting than league ones. If you ensure the best 20 possible make it somehow (say currently) each year they quickly change focus when things aren't going well enough and again interest dies. Will you're approach gradually work overtime? With the approach of the French league were a top 6 mega rich Premier League type club system might develop, maybe it will? But what of a model like Englands were its fairly competitive top 8 but orders or performances can jump around quite easily one year to the next? If the England sides are strong comparatively to the rest do they still remain in EPCR despite not consistently dominating in their own league?


So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).


You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.


I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?

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f
fl 5 hours ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

"Right, so even if they were the 4 worst teams in Champions Cup, you'd still have them back by default?"

I think (i) this would literally never happen, (ii) it technically couldn't quite happen, given at least 1 team would qualify via the challenge cup, so if the actual worst team in the CC qualified it would have to be because they did really well after being knocked down to the challenge cup.

But the 13th-15th teams could qualify and to be fair I didn't think about this as a possibility. I don't think a team should be able to qualify via the Champions Cup if they finish last in their group.


Overall though I like my idea best because my thinking is, each league should get a few qualification spots, and then the rest of the spots should go to the next best teams who have proven an ability to be competitive in the champions cup. The elite French clubs generally make up the bulk of the semi-final spots, but that doesn't (necessarily) mean that the 5th-8th best French clubs would be competitive in a slimmed down champions cup. The CC is always going to be really great competition from the semis onwards, but the issue is that there are some pretty poor showings in the earlier rounds. Reducing the number of teams would help a little bit, but we could improve things further by (i) ensuring that the on-paper "worst" teams in the competition have a track record of performing well in the CC, and (ii) by incentivising teams to prioritise the competition. Teams that have a chance to win the whole thing will always be incentivised to do that, but my system would incentivise teams with no chance of making the final to at least try to win a few group stage matches.


"I'm afraid to say"

Its christmas time; there's no need to be afraid!

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