Rarely will a Leinster dressingroom have felt so devastated and quiet. Rarely will the long road back to winning a fifth Heineken Champions Cup have seemed so arduous as in the next few days. As Leinster players, coaches and staff began to come to terms with a second loss in their sixth final, they will reflect ruefully about how the coveted trophy slipped from their grasp.
‘We were in a position to win the game, we just couldn’t nail it’
Yes, they had their regrets from losing after earning a 10-0 lead in the first-half against Saracens three seasons ago. But this time, without ever landing a decisive blow, when Johnny Sexton’s sixth penalty put them 18-10 ahead just before the hour, and again when Ross Byrne made it 21-17 and Thomas Lavault was yellow carded with 15 minutes remaining, it looked like it would be their day. Fifteen minutes later it was snatched from their grasp.
After his record sixth start in a final, and in his penultimate tilt at this trophy, the Leinster captain Johnny Sexton admitted: “Everyone is pretty devastated in there, it’s a tough way to lose, in the last second and not even have a chance to come back and try to win the game.”
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“A couple of slips, and fair play to (Arthur) Retiere for reaching out. It was tough to take. Obviously there were a lot of things that didn’t go our way in the last 30 minutes when we were in control of the game. That’s the devastating bit.
“We had chances to score, probably, at times, and we could have been a bit more aggressive and gone for tries on a couple of those penalties, because they were repeatedly infringing. But we decided to keep the scoreboard ticking over, but hindsight is a great thing, everyone is an expert. We made the decisions, and we were in control. A couple of big moments, a couple of big decisions that put them in a position to get into our 22.
“They had just gone down to 14, and we give away a high tackle which … I don’t know …,” mused Sexton about the penalty against Jamison Gibson-Park which was the first of a flurry of penalties in favour of La Rochelle from there on until the end.
“They got down to our 22, and we don’t get out of there again. Fair play to the lads, how brave they were and how well defended. I thought we were going to hold out, but we didn’t.”
Asked for his message to his players, Sexton said: “Look, you can’t fault the effort, the spirit. To hold La Rochelle out for the last however many minutes it was, was incredible.
“You can’t fault the effort, at times, it comes down to the bounce of the ball and a couple of decisions. We will look at them but we will also look at ourselves about some of the inaccuracies that we had.
“We were in a position to win the game, we just couldn’t nail it.”
Somehow, Leinster have to realign their sights on the URC, beginning with a quarter-final at home to Glasgow next week, but that will seem harder now, for this was the prize they coveted more.
“We judge ourselves off both but ultimately, yeah, I can’t contradict what I said yesterday, this is the one that everyone wants to win. This is the one we desperately wanted to win and we’ve come in 60 seconds of it, it’s a pretty bad dressingroom to be in at the moment.
“We have to dust ourselves off. It’s an incredible tournament, so hard to win, to think of all the good teams are in it and only one gets to walk away with the prize, La Rochelle got to do that today.”
Leo Cullen admitted: “It’s a sickener, for starters. The lads that worked incredibly hard this year, the players, the back room. There’s a lot of sacrifice that goes into getting a team to this point. We had amazing support this year, and it’s great to be at this stage. It’s hugely frustrating from our point of view, whatever you want to put on it, because it means so much to us. It means so much to all of us.
As much as this constituted a huge blow for Leinster, it represented a big breakthrough day for La Rochelle and their head coach Ronan O’Gara after they lost both the Champions Cup and French Championship final last season.
As O’Gara had vowed the day before, his side came to play.
“I think it’s easy to explain. You lose two finals and it’s a desperate place, so my first reaction would be I understand how Leo (Cullen), Stuart (Lancaster), Felipe (Contepomi), Robin (McBryde) and Denis (Leamy) feel. It’s a horrible, horrible position to be in because the only time we led the game was in the 80th minute, and they didn’t even get the chance to kick-off which is a kick in the balls.”
“When you become a coach it’s lonely, it’s quite isolated, and that’s the ruthless side of the Champions Cup final. You’d have to spare a thought for those guys and their players tonight.
“Our mindset was great. For people who don’[t believe you learn things in (losing) finals we have ample proof that it does happen, it does work. We learned from our mistakes but as Greg (Alldritt) said, and he has been brilliant all week in how he laid the players to believe that this is going to happen.
“Without, I hope, any semblance of arrogance, we genuinely believed that we would win today and otherwise what happened throughout the game there was ample opportunities to jump ship — 18-10, yellow card. But teams with bottle, belief, a vision, find a way to win and the boys deserve immense credit for staying on task.
“I think we caused them a little bit of problems in the first-half yet we didn’t probably get the reward. We were inaccurate around our understanding what he (Wayne Barnes) wanted with tackle and get out. We got penalised and we gave them easy entries into our half of the pitch.
“Then a five-metre scrum, a decision against us that our loose-head took it down and then they went the length of the pitch as classy teams do, and they came away with three points, but that could have been seven. That could have been a big moment.
“There were one or two boys sulking at half-time at 12-7 but I said to them that before the game if we could sign a 12-7 I’d sign it, because we knew that we’re a second-half team. The data says that and as a coach you have to get into that even though I prefer the human side of the game, but we knew that Leinster’s last 20 is where we can get them.
“We talk about fine margins and then I’m just trying to explain why the boys were so mentally strong in the last few minutes because you go off your feet at any of those 150 pick and goes it’s a penalty against us. That’s the Cup gone and then we’re a team of bottlers. Three finals and we can’t get over the line.
“What pleases me the most is I’m very proud of them. I’m very proud of their mental resolve and it’s a great starting point for the club.”
