FEATURE How Leinster neutralised 'long-in-the-tooth' La Rochelle

What happens when a successful sports team has reached the summit and planted a flag or two at the top, but then begins its descent down the other side? It is one of the most difficult times for any professional coaching and high-performance brigade, and it is the stage of development at which even an outstanding rugby mind such as Eddie Jones has often discovered a slippery slope to the bottom of the mountain.

Transforming losers into winners is one thing, but rebuilding a side that already understands success is quite another. It requires a more delicate sense of timing, and a finer sensitivity to the team dynamic. After leading England to a World Cup final in 2019, Jones was unable to find the right pieces of the puzzle in the build-up four years later.

That is the phase of the cycle which European giants Leinster and La Rochelle are entering. Those two clubs [along with Stade Toulousain] have dominated the Champions Cup for the past four seasons, but both are in the process of regenerating personnel and tactical outlook.

On the evidence of Saturday’s semi-final between the two clubs, the rebuild in the Bay of Biscay is going to take longer than it is on the east coast of Ireland. Several key players in the Stade Rochelais squad are in their thirties: up front, Uini Atonio is 34 and Levani Botia a year older, while Australian colossus Will Skelton will be 32 next month; in the backline, both scrum-half Tawera Kerr-Barlow and Jonathan Danty are thirty-somethings who have recently been showing signs of wear and tear.

If you want a list of the top half-dozen players who powered Les Maritimes to success in Europe those five would all be on it, along with number eight Greg Alldritt. But in only one position is there a replacement of comparable quality waiting to assume the mantle when Father Time finally comes calling.

Leinster have grasped the nettle earlier, replacing a senior coach who had already driven the province to stratospheric heights in one area of the game [Stuart Lancaster on attack] with one who could push the envelope to a fresh limit in another [Jacques Nienaber on defence]. More recently, one of the brightest young offensive minds in the game has been added to the coaching staff in the shape of ex-Hurricanes assistant Tyler Bleyendaal.

My response would be, let’s not try to say ‘it’s not fair and [let’s] limit Leinster’, let’s look to ways we can get to that level of competition with them.

Director of rugby Leo Cullen has focused on player recruitment at the highest possible level: a fringe Springbok [Jason Jenkins] has been replaced by an even more massive double World-Cup winner in the second row [RG Snyman], while All Black Jordie Barrett is a potential successor to Robbie Henshaw in the centre. When Cullen began the deep dive for a man to supplant redoubtable Tadhg Furlong at prop, the player mentioned most in dispatches was none other than Wallaby powerhouse Taniela Tupou.

Exeter’s astute director of rugby Rob Baxter was casting seriously envious eyes across the Irish Sea at Leinster’s pulling power and their ability to identify key stages in the developmental cycle.

“It makes you a bit jealous you are not working in Leinster’s recruitment department!

“[Ex-Sale Director of Rugby] Steve Diamond once said it depends what shop you go shopping in: is it Waitrose or is it Aldi? [At Leinster] it might [even] be Fortnum and Mason!

“If Irish rugby, Leinster and the United Rugby Championship can get their house in order to allow them to invest in players, their programme and their coaches like they do, you have to say fair play [to them].

“My response would be, let’s not try to say ‘it’s not fair and [let’s] limit Leinster;, let’s look to ways we can get to that level of competition with them.

“You can look around and say, ‘let’s stop everyone else doing it because we can’t do it’. Or you go, ‘what are they doing to develop that level of interest and finance, and why can’t we do it?’.

“To get that deal in place you have to get a lot of financial bits and pieces right – and that runs right from the top of the game to the bottom in the country.

“There is a lot we have to do to get to that level, but why shouldn’t we be aiming for it? That is what we should be trying to do.”

As Springbok legend Victor Matfield added ruefully while considering his beloved Bulls’ prospects of reaching the latter stages of the URC: “It’s never easy, even if you play a Leinster ‘B’ side – they might have [both] the best, and the second-best team in the competition.”

Leinster themselves were in freefall ahead of the 2016-17 season, when Lancaster first joined forces with Cullen to form the golden ticket. The province had finished bottom of their pool the previous season with only one win out of six European matches, and the winning continuity had been broken.

The idea of going from strength to strength has now been restored, and in 2024 Cullen has rather less work to do than Ronan O’Gara to build a successful future on the bridge between cycles.

One unmistakeable sign of the difference was the way in which Leinster were able to neutralise all La Rochelle’s key individuals, and nullify their collective super-strengths for the first time in three seasons. The mighty power-carrying trio of Skelton, Atonio and Danty made 23 runs for a paltry 14 metres. Fijian breakdown terror Botia was limited to La Rochelle’s one solitary pilfer of the game, set against five by the hosts.

The Rochelais driving lineout generated one try just before half-time but their return on red zone entries was poor – a mere 0.64 points per entry to the 22, compared to Leinster’s healthy 2.82. Hell, the Dubliners were even strong in their weakest period, winning the last 30 minutes of the game 10-0. As O’Gara commented, “You could see the dominant team was in blue. Their rush defence worked well in the first 70 [minutes], [and] I don’t think we won a breakdown penalty bar the kick-off we took.”

When La Rochelle had the ball in the middle of the field and attempted to drop Leinster’s time of possession, their very big men found themselves under constant pressure from the new Nienaber defence.

First Skelton, then Atonio are stopped in their tracks on the carry. No second effort, no yards after contact. In the screenshot, Leinster have what any Nienaber defence wants – an overlap on to the receivers in the second of line of attack, forcing the ball-carrier back into a promising tackling/jackaling combination [Jenkins tackling, with Andrew Porter on the pilfer].

Botia has been a thorn in Leinster’s side on their breakdown ball, but was always a step short of making a decisive tackle or turnover.

In the first instance, O’Gara ideally wants one of the two defenders outside Botia to complete the tackle on Leinster hooker Dan Sheehan, so the Fijian [in the yellow-and-black hat] can enjoy a free shot at the ball. But Sheehan smartly forces Botia to make the stop, giving him two mechanical movements to make rather than one – he has to tackle before he can go back in on the ball. That affords the two cleanout players [number 12 Jamie Osborne and seven Will Connors] just enough time to pick him off when the ball goes to ground.

In the second clip, Leinster loosehead Porter is playing as an upfield ‘post’, close enough to the gain-line to draw a torpedo-like rush from Botia, but not so flat he cannot get the pass away just before impact. The prop was also the likeliest receiver to score on the following play at the Rochelais goal-line, a sure sign he had completed his task perfectly.

The French giants have had great success in persuading referees to accept defensive ‘litter’ around the breakdown as de rigeur in the previous two finals, but Leinster had an answer for that too.

Botia falls directly into the pathway of both the Leinster cleanout and scrum-half Jamison Gibson-Park on his roll ‘away’ from the tackle, and the mercurial half-back ensures referee Karl Dickson has to make a decision.

The other primary area of success was in defence of the driving lineout.

The Donnacha Ryan-coached formula La Rochelle employ to powerful effect features their two biggest forwards at the tip of the drive [Skelton and Atonio], with the second layer looking to break off into open field once the twin titans have subdued the defence and sealed it away from the ball.

But Leinster flood the receiver [Judicael Cancoriet] in both examples, to make sure they can penetrate on to the ball-carrier at the precise moment the intended breakaway occurs. That forces either a turnover [in the first clip] or an officiating call for the visitors to play away from their superstrength [in the second].

Going from strength to strength is probably the toughest coaching conundrum in the professional game. A long run of success tends to encourage fierce loyalty to the people who made it possible in the first place, and that can mean a failure to identify or manage the transition between an old cycle and the new.

That is the task facing Leinster and La Rochelle, and last weekend the back-to-back European champions looked both fatigued from their travels and not a little long in the tooth. With the introduction of Nienaber Leinster kicked on, and unearthed new ideas to counter their bête jaune-et-noir, effectively knocking its big players out of the contest and winning the mini-battles within the war. Are they further along their chosen path than Antoine Dupont’s Toulouse? Next month’s final at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium may well give us the answer.