The Ronan O’Gara ‘f***ing knob jockeys giving us the finger’ remark that sets up La Rochelle’s upcoming trip to Leinster
Ronan O'Gara savours La Rochelle's 2023 Champions Cup final win over Leinster
Ronan O’Gara has raised the temperature ahead of La Rochelle’s latest Investec Champions Cup trip to Leinster.
The French club are due in Dublin on January 10 for a Pool 3 encounter and local fans are sure to take issue with the Irishman over the derogatory remarks he made about them in a recently published book.
Ex-Munster star O’Gara was one of more than 100 people interviewed for Touching Distance, the highly acclaimed Gill Books publication that forensically details Irish rugby’s battle with great expectations.
Written by Brendan Fanning, it was published in October ahead of the recent Autumn Nations Series. Aside from charting Ireland’s fortunes at Test level over the course of the last two decades, there were also in-depth investigations into the state of the game at club level.
“The whole f***ing street was stopping for a laugh…”
O’Gara featured towards the end of a compelling chapter about the evolution of the Leo Cullen era at Leinster and how his La Rochelle team tormented them.
“Three times in as many seasons, from 2021 to 2023, his team threw Leinster under the bus and reversed over them. When finally Leinster saw them off, in season 2023/24, along came Toulouse who inflicted more pain,” wrote Fanning, setting the scene for some colourful input from O’Gara.
It dwelt on the opening half of the 2023 Champions Cup final in Dublin where Leinster shredded La Rochelle. Aside from the pummelling the French were taking on the pitch, O’Gara wasn’t shy in referencing the alleged abuse he and his fellow coaches were on the receiving end of off the pitch.
“Okay, here’s a memory from the third game – sounds like a series, doesn’t it? – the third game in the final (2023) at the Aviva. We’re 17 points down. We’ve been absolutely f***ing steamrolled and I’m trying to look composed.
“I’m a decent rugby coach, but you know all this stuff: ‘I never stopped believing?’ Bollocks! I’m trying to think of a speech to give the players at half-time that has nothing to do with winning the game – like this has gone beyond pear-shaped. Is there a chance we’ll be able to leave the stadium with some dignity?
“Every time my image is thrown up on the big screen the crowd are booing. Like, these are people who would know nothing about me, half of them, who have arrived late in the day to follow the boys in blue. There are lots of sound Leinster fans, but these f***ing knob jockeys in their Brown Thomas gear are giving us the finger as we are in the coaching box. It was like sitting in a shop window and the whole f***ing street was stopping for a laugh.”
O’Gara went on to describe the genesis of his half-time interval rallying cry that sparked the incredible second-half comeback that left La Rochelle champions. “All of a sudden, for the little bit of ball we had, I thought there was something we could do. And it was beautiful. Fair enough, Leinster didn’t see it that way but from where I was sitting, it was poetry with a bit of muscle thrown in.
“When we had the home semi-final with Leinster in 2021, the whole Munster-Leinster stuff was always going to be a selling point. And of course, it was appealing because when you did your match-ups, in my head, I thought we could out-rugby them.
“The (Jamison) Gibson-Park of 2021 was not the Gibson-Park of 2024 and 2025, and (Tawera) Kerr-Barlow for us then was ahead of him. Then you have (Will) Skelton and (Jonathan) Danty.
“When it came to the Dublin final, all the talk was about (Garry) Ringrose and (Robbie) Henshaw and I was thinking: ‘Hold on a sec, lads, we have got Danty and (Ulupano) Seuteni here.’ I knew the week-in, week-out, consistency of a Ringrose-Henshaw partnership – good and all as it was – could be demolished by the freakish ability of the Danty and Seuteni power show.
“You play that game 10 times and you’re looking at consistency winning out, but I wasn’t looking at 10 times. I was living in one-off territory, which is what cup rugby is about. There were these little wins to be had all over the field. To be honest, I don’t think people appreciated the quality of cattle we had in the first place, but yeah, they did by game three.
“I learned a lot from those games. As a player, I enjoyed probably 10 years with one-way traffic over Leinster. And then since Croke Park (2009) it has been reversed. So when it came to La Rochelle against Leinster in my head I was trading on my Munster shares, bought when I was on the winning team.”
O’Gara went on to reference an illuminating moment on the Ireland training ground involving a then-new player from Leinster. “I remember Luke Fitzgerald coming into Ireland camp and him explaining to me what to do. In a really nice way. ‘Rog, you should flatten up there a little and attack the line and I’ll be on your inside.’
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“I was like: ‘Wow, that’s so good!’ This is how he was raised whereas for two years in Munster I wouldn’t fucking speak! It was such an eye-opener, how Leinster lads think about it. They think they should be ruling the world whereas we had negativity beaten into us.
“The Munster I grew up with gave me a good understanding of what it took to succeed: you needed resilience, and you needed to deal with adversity, and by f*** did we get a lot of it. So, when you get to European Cup semi-finals and finals, it shows you are good enough to get there but you don’t believe you have any X-factor.
“From my coaching experience with the Crusaders, and their All Blacks legends, and Racing, I could see how you tap into that confidence and use it in a good way. I took the best parts of those two and married them with my experience as a successful Munster player and tried to use them with La Rochelle. Those games with Leinster allowed me to think I’m doing something right.”
