‘Rage in my head’ Ronan O’Gara plays blame game after ‘unacceptable’ La Rochelle elimination
La Rochelle duo Ronan O'Gara and, inset, Jack Nowell, following Sunday night's loss to Harlequins (INPHO/Billy Stickland)
Ronan O’Gara has vented his anger after seeing two-time champions La Rochelle dramatically eliminated from the Investec Champions Cup. The back-to-back 2022-2023 champions needed a point at home against Harlequins on Sunday to secure progress to the Round of 16.
Instead, a team that was only beaten by the final kick of the match at Leinster eight days earlier succumbed to a shock 27-17 defeat that left them pointless, finishing in fifth place in Pool C and relegating them to the EPCR Challenge Cup in April.
Going into the final minute, La Rochelle trailed Harlequins 24-17 but the losing bonus point would have been enough to qualify them ahead of Leicester Tigers. However, Marcus Smith’s last-gasp penalty increased the margin to 10 points, taking the bonus from La Rochelle and consigning them to a Challenge Cup match at Newcastle instead of progressing to the Champions Cup Round of 16 and a trip to Bordeaux.
The loss hit O’Gara hard but unlike in Dublin, where the team’s flight departure was given as the reason he couldn’t do a post-game media conference after a senior coach had already been sent in to take questions following the painful loss, the Irishman fronted the press in La Rochelle on Sunday night and his answers provided a withering take on his team’s demise.
“I’d like to cry, I’d like to rant…”
“Harlequins deserved their victory,” he said to the assembled media. “They were the better team. They showed a real hunger for victory, a bit like we did last week. But unfortunately, we weren’t able to switch gears, we weren’t motivated to win in front of our home crowd. It’s an unacceptable defeat.
“Yes, I’d like to cry, I’d like to rant, I’d like to do a lot of things… but I anticipated this. I have known since last Saturday that it was going to be difficult.
“We relaxed, we thought it would be ‘okay’ for the 80 minutes, but it’s never like that in sport. We didn’t take the initiative. We did the opposite of last week. When you can’t manage the last 70 seconds last week with a penalty kick (for Leinster), and today you can’t maintain a seven-point gap with the final touch… We’re beating ourselves.”
O’Gara suggested his team was shy of contact against Harlequins. “Absolutely. We played a pre-contact game; we didn’t want to hurt them, we didn’t want to dominate Harlequins. “I asked the players, why wouldn’t we want to put 50 points on Harlequins and have the crowd on its feet and everyone celebrating here? Where’s that ambition?
“It’s not an easy night. It’s a huge disappointment. I take my job very seriously. What is this, tonight? The club, me, everyone: we’ve lost big tonight. It’s unacceptable. It’s not possible, especially when you look at the number of opportunities we have to stay in the competition. That’s why I’m even more frustrated.
“You have no idea of the frustration, the disappointment, the rage in my head seeing this in front of our fans who pay a huge amount of money to be here on a Sunday. It’s unacceptable.”
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