There is no room to quibble after last weekend’s Heineken Champions Cup semi-finals: it is clear that the best two teams – La Rochelle, the defending champions, and Leinster – thoroughly deserve their place in the decider, which is to be first repeat of the previous year’s final.
Leo Cullen’s Leinster exacted a hefty tariff from Toulouse indiscipline, collecting 28 points while the French side were a man short on two occasions. It was a surprisingly bloodless coup for the most part, once the Irish province had recovered from the concession of an early try. They managed to keep their opponents at arm’s length.
La Rochelle conceded the opening try of their semi-final in Bordeaux, but it hardly mattered as Ronan O’Gara’s side were quickly into their playing rhythm and ripped the Exeter Chiefs asunder at will. In terms of material to review, neither of the finalists gave away too much; if the match was played next Saturday with identical line-ups, I’d make La Rochelle favourites.
There’s a slight caveat in that Exeter were very poor, giving one of the worst semi-final performances I have seen for a long time. Having settled nicely and earned their position at 7-7 after 14 minutes, once the pressure came on, the collective body language deteriorated, save for a few individuals, and they didn’t look like they believed they could win.
The disarray in defence, the error rate, the lack of coherence in attack until the game was effectively over as a contest, were symptomatic of a team that wasn’t at the race mentally.
The financial constraints in English rugby this season have been well documented, with the RFU projecting a £50 million (€56.8 million) loss in the next 12 months and the cumulative debt among English Premiership clubs topping £500 million. Smaller, leaner squads in the English club game are not able to compete on two fronts. The gulf in class, both physically and experience-wise, between the two teams in Bordeaux was staggering.
La Rochelle’s ability to fill gaps in their squad has been demonstrated with the utmost precision, blending French domestic talent with position-specific overseas Test match-level quality. The way Romain Sazy, Thomas Lavault and Rémi Bourdeau complement Will Skelton’s power and size, or how Brice Dulin is surrounded by Dillyn Leyds and Raymond Rhule, represents gold-star recruitment, where the incoming player must fit the group in talent but also personality.
There are few, if any, gaps in the La Rochelle teams that take the field each week. They are facilitated by a big budget but that comes with an expectation of silverware. We have seen time and again that throwing money around does not generally guarantee success unless your name is Toulon. Credit too must go to O’Gara, Donnacha Ryan and the coaching team. La Rochelle are well drilled, well organised and a pleasure to watch.
Toulouse head coach Ugo Mola rolled the dice and turned the semi-final into a crapshoot by opting for a 6-2 split on the bench. Sod’s law dictated that his team would suffer an early injury.And one of a couple of backs he didn’t want to lose under any circumstances was the one he did: centre Pierre-Louis Barassi. Mola made four adjustments to the backline to compensate.
Antoine Dupont’s relocation to outhalf made life a little easier for Leinster because he’s at his best when he’s at the centre of affairs, bringing Toulouse’s big men into the game with subtle passes, putting players through holes or creating one himself. In short, he is a nightmare to deal with defensively in and around the gain-line because of his defence-shredding capabilities.
Leinster’s general policy in defence was to tackle low against a pack that outweighed them by about eight kilograms a man. The execution of the chop tackle was good generally, with the second defender asked to read the outcome and decide whether they would poach, tackle-assist or stop the offload.
Toulouse racked up 28 offloads to Leinster’s four and when the French side broke the gain-line initially, they managed to do so two or three times in quick succession. The build-up to Emmanuel Meafou’s try was a good example of the power game against a chop-tackle defence. Offloads and losing gain-lines are an unintended consequence of this type of approach.
La Rochelle are even bigger as a team so Leinster will have to work out which defensive system is best suited to that assignment. While Toulouse’s indiscipline was costly, I would describe it as a byproduct of the early enforced positional switches that dramatically unsettled the visitors.
Leinster and La Rochelle turn their attention to domestic fare for a couple of weeks and both have the playing resources to accommodate the double focus, albeit that Leinster look light in the back three. James Lowe was sorely missed and will continue to be so if his injury keeps him sidelined.
Charlie Ngatai’s ability to play out of the tackle, among other assets, provided Leinster with an ideal foil for Ross Byrne, with the New Zealander admirably taking on some of the creative responsibility. Otherwise, Leinster look a little predictable in broken play in the absence of Lowe’s attacking prowess.
Both O’Gara and Cullen now must attend to league matters, La Rochelle looking to protect their position in second place in the French Top 14 with matches against Toulon and Montpellier while Leinster host the Sharks and, if they win, either Glasgow or Munster the following weekend. They’ll already have a fair idea of the match day 23s for the next fortnight, injuries notwithstanding.
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Leinster squad’s depth will be on view this week, with players such as Scott Penny, Max Deegan, Michael Milne, who all fronted up in South Africa two weeks ago, likely to get game time. The Sharks game will pose a similar challenge to La Rochelle with physically imposing carriers, but it will allow Leinster to refine a defensive system and focus on the decision of the support defender to try to stop the offload.
La Rochelle threw 15 offloads at the weekend, but Leinster missed almost 20 per cent of their tackles, a very similar number to Exeter. Leinster will need to address this; the template is the right one and they have less than three weeks to perfect it.
