Initially he had reservations about jumping aboard the Sam Prendergast hype train, but even Ronan O’Gara has evidently been converted. The former Munster and Ireland outhalf is even more convinced after witnessing first hand how the 21-year-old Leinster man calmly negotiated the Stade Deflandre cauldron in Leinster’s 16-14 win over La Rochelle on Sunday.
Prendergast’s performance wasn’t without its imperfections and, as the former Leinster outhalf Ian Madigan observed on commentary, the 21-year-old’s liking for spiralling some clearance kicks carries a bigger risk of being charged down, as happened twice in La Rochelle.
But Prendergast’s composure throughout was again striking, and no matter the din in the stands he calmly landed four kicks from four, which was critical in a game of such fine margins.
Leinster win in La Rochelle - grit or alarm bells?
By comparison his counterpart Antoine Hastoy landed three from six, leaving eight points behind off the tee, while also having a late drop goal attempt charged down by Josh van der Flier. Furthermore, after being brought on to steer Leinster home as a replacement for Prendergast just past the hour, Ross Byrne also missed what for him would be considered a kickable penalty, and Jordie Barrett missed from long-range.
“He is an impressive young player, that’s for certain,” said O’Gara, “and as I said previously on the record I thought there was probably a buzz about him that wasn’t necessary. But after what I saw in Bristol he merits all that and he deserves all that.”
Prendergast landed all five conversions in Leinster’s 35-7 first round win in Bristol, including two well-taken tries of his own in a 20-point haul.
“Today I don’t think he missed a kick, did he?” said O’Gara after Prendergast’s 11-point contribution to Leinster’s victory. “And none of them were easy. And [he] managed the game well. He has a huge future. You just have to go after a 20-year-old because you know he is 20 and I was 20 and playing in that position. What you feel as a 20-year-old, it’s not easy.
“So he won that game tonight, in terms of against me, because I didn’t get much change out of him,” said O’Gara with a wry chuckle.
O’Gara is obviously supportive of Prendergast’s attempts to revive the spiral kick which was once a trademark part of his skill set, although he also noted: “Mind you, there was a bit of dodgy kicking from both teams tonight as well, so we need to work on a few high balls missed as well.”
Indeed, Brice Dulin’s failure to gather one of Prendergast’s high kicks, and resorting to fly hacking the ball, led to one of the Leinster outhalf’s three penalties.
In addition to his missed points Hastoy also had a couple of kicks out on the full before his late long-range attempt fell just short and hit the post, after which he had that drop goal charged down.
O’Gara believed that Hastoy should have dropped deeper into the picket by seven or eight metres and thereby negate the threat of a charge down by van der Flier.
“Do you know that it’s an image conversation as opposed to a conversation,” said O’Gara when asked how he could go about dissecting this with his outhalf. “Laptop, watch it, and the images will speak for themselves. Hopefully, like most good players, he will give the solution. If it comes from me it is not good coaching.
“But,” stressed the one-time master of landing clutch drop goals, “depth.”
In mitigation of Hastoy’s miss from 52 metres, O’Gara said that in cold conditions such as Sunday evening the ball is harder to kick, and that a 50-metre penalty is equivalent to a 60-metre penalty.
“Yes, of course,” said Hastoy himself when this was put to him. “There was a bit of wind against us, it was cold, but I think it was the right solution because we were struggling in the scoring zones. In the end we had another last shot on the drop and I got too close to Tawera [Kerr-Barlow]. I wanted to play on speed and it wasn’t the right decision. The drop was well hit but, as I said, I was too close and too easily countered.”
From hero to villain in a week such are the vagaries of life as a goalkicker, as O’Gara also knows as well as anyone.
“I think that tonight and tomorrow it’s still going to be difficult,” said Hastoy. “That’s normal. Afterwards, like every time I’ve had failures, I’m just going to get back to work. A week ago it was a smile [Hastoy nailed the late penalty that saw La Rochelle beat Toulouse]. And the following week, it’s like that... That’s what the role of a scorer is all about. You can’t get hung up on that. I’m obviously disappointed, especially for the team, not to have been able to give the victory because I think we deserved it.”
O’Gara had freely admitted that La Rochelle had been a long way behind Toulouse and Bordeaux-Begles, but their performance against Leinster had been their best of the season so far.
“I think that before this match we could say that we were far behind,” admitted Hastoy. “Now I think we are on the right track. There is still a lot of work to do, confidence to gain, but we are on the right track in any case.”
O’Gara had also said that he had almost “broken” Hastoy, and that he been very hard on his outhalf, but only because he appreciated his potential. What’s more O’Gara admitted that he was wrong and vowed to change his approach. Asked about his thoughts on this, Hastoy said: “I don’t really want to talk about it. They weren’t the best weeks of my life. We’ve moved on.”
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