Ronan O’Gara afterwards said he looked at Leinster’s matches against Leicester and Connacht, not at Toulouse in the semi-final. It was Leicester and Connacht who didn’t stand off and had some success in halting Leinster’s flowing brand of rugby. There he saw potential and La Rochelle had to do the same.
But even the La Rochelle coach conceded that at 18-10 down after Johnny Sexton had kicked his sixth penalty on 53 minutes something had to happen for his team to change the direction of the final. In the closing 10 minutes that did happen and it took a mindset that laid all of its money on La Rochelle’s idea of a 23-man game.
Throughout the match there were important momentum shifts that gave each side purpose to compete harder, each one nudging either Leinster or La Rochelle towards their desired destination.
The first shift came between 11 and 13 minutes. The ball in La Rochelle possession was fed wide left and found the hands of winger Raymond Rhule. The fast feet of Rhule took him sharply inside the approaching Hugo Keenan, who just felt the fabric of the white shirt before Rhule ran in for the try.
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Leinster could have looked back to the game against Toulouse and reimagined how they reacted to the score against the run of play by French scrumhalf Antoine Dupont.
Instead, after Ihaia West converted for 7-6, Wayne Barnes awarded La Rochelle the first scrum of the match. The French got the push and the Leinster scrum went backwards with Barnes awarding a penalty.
Within two minutes La Rochelle had scored a converted try and earned a scrum penalty. After an upbeat Leinster start, the tone of the game had noticeably turned.
Then as Leinster continued to build their score, penalties begin to accumulate for La Rochelle. On 52 minutes Barnes made the decision to warn the French side for too many infringements and he put them on warning.
As he did, Sexton lined up for his sixth successful kick and brought the score to 18-10 and La Rochelle, with their penalty count going up along with the scoreboard, appeared to flag.
Leinster then looked comfortable, perhaps thinking more penalties or else a yellow card would follow if La Rochelle kept infringing. A yellow would arrive but for a different reason with Thomas Lavault deliberately and clearly tripping Jamison Gibson-Park as he was running past. Stupid, stupid that was. Leinster then grabbed the momentum. It didn’t last long.
Six minutes after Leinster’s move to 18-10 ahead, La Rochelle fullback Brice Dulin attempted a Hail Mary drop goal attempt from way out. The kick didn’t look like troubling the posts and when it came to earth, it touched ground in play and bounced back out into the field towards the players, where Sexton gathered.
Instead of a conservative kick to touch he decided to run it back but quickly was caught and forced into a hasty pass to Keenan who took the ball on. But when the Leinster fullback was tackled Barnes’ hand quickly went out for a penalty against Leinster.
La Rochelle kicked to touch deep in Leinster territory, secured the lineout throw and set a rolling maul in motion. The result of that was hooker Pierre Bourgait touching down and West converting for 18-17. Again, a bad execution of a Leinster exit and the momentum took a large swing, this time towards La Rochelle.
And they worked it well surging into the Leinster half and eating into ground. It seemed then the try was the fuel they needed to push on hard and as they swept into the Leinster 22 looking slick and dangerous a misplaced pass hit prop Uini Atonio and the ball knocked forward. West clasped his head in frustration and while momentum didn’t change, it stopped for La Rochelle.
Oddly the final trigger came from Lavault’s trip on Gibson Park which had him in the bin on 65 minutes, allowing Ross Byrne to kick Leinster to 21-17.
But because they were down to 14 men, La Rochelle, in the closing 10 minutes three times opted to take a scrum rather than kick points. That decision was the final momentum swing and the winning of the game for two reasons.
As O’Gara said after the match, the data showed him that in the last 20 minutes of matches La Rochelle scored 60 per cent of their points, while Leinster did it in the first 20 minutes. He clung to that hope.
The former Munster and Ireland outhalf also added that ‘Skin’ [Donnacha] Ryan hates it when the backs get their hands on the ball’. With that in mind there was no other way other than the big men and a scrumhalf, Arthur Retiere,, would determine the final momentum swing.
