La Rochelle head coach Ronan O’Gara bridled at suggestions, after his team beat Exeter at the weekend, that Leinster will have a more difficult schedule heading into the Champions Cup final later this month.
Leinster overcame Toulouse 41-22 in their last-four contest on Saturday, which has become the first of a series of knockout, play-off matches.
Leinster meet the Sharks in the United Rugby Championship (URC) quarter-final on Saturday before playing a possible semi-final before the Champions Cup showpiece event.
“You’d find this hard in your mindset, but the month Leinster have this month, we have it every month. I think you need to think about that a little bit,” said O’Gara in an interview with BT Sport.
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“It is 10 months of a slog. I have to get a team for Toulon, we play Montpellier, then we play Leinster.”
Leinster coach and former Wales and Lions hooker Robin McBryde, looking at the Leinster run-in, took exception to the words of the former Irish outhalf.
“I don’t necessarily agree with what he said with regards to them playing big game after big game,” said McBryde. “We’re in the same situation playing big game after big game. It’s like a mini-World Cup towards the end of the year.
“If we can win on Saturday, it is another big game. The URC is very tough, you know what I mean? You’ve got the South African teams who are bringing everything with them now.
“In their first season they were just finding things out. They’ve got a grasp of it now and they’re bloody difficult teams to play against and they’ve raised the standard, profile, everything. So, I wouldn’t say we’d have it easy in any way, shape or form. It has been a tough slog.”
Leinster have reached the point now where the sharp disappointment of last season has become a cautionary tale for them. They have walked the same path and find themselves in a similar place.
It’s a sore point that the final couple of must-win matches in May last season undid the entire 10 months before that, turning the double dream of league and Champions Cup into a double disappointment.
O’Gara’s words may now be a brief distraction. But last season is in the back of Leinster minds. A European final against La Rochelle and the league quarterfinal against the Sharks on Saturday is where they want to be, but also a reminder of how things can suddenly jackknife.
“We were disappointed with the loss to La Rochelle in the final and then the rebound off that against Glasgow was great. But then we were found wanting against the Bulls,” says McBryde. “That’s what is foremost in my mind anyway.
“Now that we’re here we just have to finish things off. We just fell short and we have to put Champions Cup to one side now. The game against [Sharks] earlier in the season was very tough.”
The talk has been of the South African teams quickly learning and adjusting to the different conditions the clubs have had to face across the two continents. The Bulls, as last season’s runners-up, did it well, timing their run to the end almost to perfection.
“I just had the feeling that they had been lying in wait for us [last year]. They came down here after the game up in Belfast. They had been here all week, and they were just prepared and ready for us. We weren’t quite there from the first minute, so we have to make sure we are on it from the first minute this Saturday.”
The issue for the Leinster coaches now is how to rotate the players. Saturday’s team was the strongest they could field. But there is a sense of blowing it out for three more matches, with Leinster hopeful that Robbie Henshaw and James Lowe will have recovered before the Champions Cup final.
Still, there is a game of chess to be played over the next three weeks.
“One thing we’re not going to do,” says McBryde. “You can’t take your foot off the pedal. You’ve got to keep going and then you can rest at the end of the year.
“We’ve just got to keep on going. We haven’t won anything yet, we’ve got nothing to show for it so we’ve got to make sure we get something to show for it.
“As regards the balance of selection, there are bound to be players that will be frustrated because they’re not playing and you’ve got to keep them energised. You’ve got to make sure they’re adding energy to the group as opposed to taking it out.”
Leinster learnt that lesson the hard way, and definitely don’t want a repeat demonstration.
