“L’opportunité, c’est f**king énorme,” roared Ronan O’Gara to his players on the eve of a French Championship semi-final against Bordeaux in June 2023. The video, like most things O’Gara does, is compelling and was seen by millions, as he addressed his team in a thickly Cork-accented French speech regularly interspersed with the ‘f’ word, raising his stock even further in Cork and Munster, if that was possible.
His team needed to focus on their own performance, O’Gara added, angrily jabbing a finger at them. “Je m’en f**king fous d’adversaire,” O’Gara roared angrily: “I don’t give a f**king damn about the opposition”.
Were they hungry to win the game, O’Gara asked, his voice rising again. Or were they planning on taking a “f**king ... vacance”, a holiday?
The scene had seemingly played out in a San Sebastian hotel team meeting room on the eve of La Rochelle’s 24-13 win over Bordeaux-Bègles before being denied a first ever Bouclier de Brennus in the final a week later by Romain Ntamack’s wondrous try.
It reminded you of O’Gara’s infamous touchline altercation with the veteran French coach Christophe Urios, currently with Clermont, then of Bordeaux/Begles and previously of Castres, when you didn’t have to be an accomplished lip reader to deduce that the former Munster and Irish out-half appeared to say: “F**k off, ye fat langer.”
Now that would definitely have been lost in translation!
Hugely amusing and entertaining though these episodes may have been, they also serve to illustrate something extraordinary – namely O’Gara’s achievements in French rugby as a coach.
For, simply put, English-speaking coaches tend not to succeed in the cut-throat soap opera that is French rugby. Take exhibit A: Jeremy Davidson. Helped by his time as a player and captain with Castres, the former Ulster, Ireland and Lions lock has survived and at times thrived for two decades as a coach in France, if usually helping smaller clubs such as Aurillac, Brive and Castres punch way above their weight.
Having been hired to ensure Castres escaped relegation at the midway point in the campaign two seasons ago, which they duly achieved, Davidson led the club to a seventh-place finish last season despite having the 12th biggest budget.
Were it not for Racing 92 scoring a converted 79th-minute try in La Rochelle on the final day to earn a bonus point in a 24-19 defeat, Castres would have finished above the Parisians and thus made the French Championship play-offs.
If that had happened, Davidson would probably still be in situ.
Instead, a few weeks into this campaign, the Castres president Pierre-Yves Revol informed Davidson that he was being succeeded by his assistant, Xavier Sadourny, at the end of the season.
Then, after Castres’s 24-19 win at home to Pau consolidated their standing in eighth place last weekend, it was announced that Davidson would assume a non-coaching role at the club for the remainder of the season, thus allowing Sadourny to assume the main role.
Even Michael Cheika, in between leading Leinster and the Waratahs to the promised land of breakthrough Champions Cup and Super Rugby successes, was removed after just two seasons with Stade Français in 2012 in what was a very French coup involving an assistant coach and one of his leading players.
But at least Cheika lasted longer than many other English-speaking coaches, such as the short-lived tenures of Rory Teague at Bordeaux/Bègles, Mike Ford at Toulon and, most recently, Richard Cockerill at Montpellier last season. Cockerill was fired just seven games into the campaign after six straight defeats by Mohed Altrad, who hired his friend and former World Rugby vice-chairman Bernard Laporte as director of rugby. Like Davidson at Castres, Cockerill’s stint as a player at Montpellier ultimately counted for little.
[ ‘Outsider’ Michael Cheika reveals role of aggression in getting Leinster jobOpens in new window ]
The successes are the exceptions. Nick Mallett is regarded as a legend at Stade Français after coaching them to two successive French championship titles in his two seasons there, 2002-03 and 2003-04. But the South African had spent seven seasons as a player with lower division French clubs Saint-Claude and Boulogne-Billancourt, as well as five seasons as head coach at the former.
When Mallett pitched up with Stade Français, he had long since been completely immersed in France and its unique culture. He knew how to speak the language, trade punches and beers and wine.
Ditto Vern Cotter. The New Zealander lasted eight years as head coach at Clermont Auvergne, and despite many wins and many heartaches, after three successive final defeats he eventually led Clermont to their breakthrough Bouclier de Brennus in 2010 with Joe Schmidt as his assistant.
After 10 years playing with Counties Manakau, Cotter had spent a decade immersing himself in lower division French club rugby with Rumily, FC Lourdes, Saint-Junien and US Castelnau-Madiran before returning to coach Clermont after a six-year absence in 2006. When he spoke French, he did so with a Basque accent.
This is partly why Stuart Lancaster’s move to Racing 92 always looked a questionable fit. Aside from the Parisian club being less of a home-based side like Leinster, Lancaster doesn’t speak French and has yet to learn the language.
What’s more, the signing of Owen Farrell – who is currently injured – hasn’t yet worked and having squeezed into the French playoffs last season, Racing are currently ninth, 10 points off the top six.
All of which is a long-winded way of trying to demonstrate the extent of what O’Gara has achieved in his coaching career in France.
As a player, O’Gara had won nine trophies with Munster and Ireland, winning 128 caps, while scoring 1,083 Test match points. He could easily have chosen a more straightforward coaching or career path, not least as a pundit, a role in which he invariably gives full value.
To move to Paris with Jessica and five young kids so as to start cutting his teeth as a skills and kicking coach after retirement in 2013, and then as a defence coach, with Racing 92, demonstrated his innate self-belief. But it was also an incredibly brave move to back himself and his Leaving Cert French.
The initial period of trying to function in French was “horrendous”, he told the Mirror in 2022.
“You’d need a bit of backbone about you – it’s difficult at the start. You’ve got to push yourself beyond the zone of making a fool of yourself for three months. I’d be in a situation where I didn’t have the words and needed a solution, so it would be like, ‘Help me here, boys.’ But once you ask for help, people help.”
O’Gara did not need to write emails in French but needed vocabulary to communicate verbally. “You can talk 70 per cent in French, 20 per cent in English and make it up for the other 10 per cent. The boys can have a good laugh at me trying to express myself in Cork French.”
But before his productive stint with the Crusaders, when they won their ninth and 10th titles under Scott Robertson, those 4½ years with Racing 92 served him well when he was hired by La Rochelle as head coach in 2019 before becoming their head of rugby in 2021 and guiding them to successive Champions Cups.
Will Skelton this week told The Irish Times about his genuine gratitude for “being coached by a guy like Rog, whom I grew up watching, and guys like Donnacha Ryan [forwards coach]. We have Sean Dougall [contact skills coach], Romain Carmignani [forwards and defence coach], Seb Boboul [attack coach] and Kevin Gourdon [technical analysis] – guys who have played for the club and know the history of the club.
“Then we have players like Greg Alldritt and Uini Atonio. Every day is a day I love going to work. I love playing for this team. It’s a special place.”
And Skelton gave an insight into O’Gara’s driven nature, which, one ventures, is inspired as much by the successes that eluded him as those he enjoyed.
“I think he’s intense. In French there’s a word ‘exigeant’. He’s demanding with his players, but he demands a lot of us because he knows the potential that we have in this group and what we’ve done in the past, he doesn’t want us to have regrets.
“He says it all the time. He won a couple of trophies club-wise and he won a Grand Slam and the Six Nations but he sees so much potential in this group and he sees the talent in this team, and that we’ve got a window to win as much as we can playing in those big games.
“He knows how good we can be. We’ve only scratched the surface in terms of that and he’s very demanding in what he wants from us. Yeah, it’s very interesting from day to day with Rog.”
Last season, La Rochelle’s sluggish start contributed to their end-of-season difficulties. They relinquished their Champions Cup crown when well beaten by Leinster in the quarter-finals before losing in the French semi-finals to Toulouse when suffering two red cards.
This has been a difficult season so far for O’Gara and La Rochelle. They sit sixth after nine wins and six losses in the Top 14. They suffered the ignominy of a home defeat to newly-promoted Vannes from Brittany and last week struggled to overcome a largely third-string Toulouse via a last-minute penalty by Antoine Hastoy.
As was the case after the defeat to Vannes, r did O’Gara, typically, did not seek to sugarcoat his side’s laboured performance, as he instead unloaded his thoughts in what was more like a stream of consciousness.
To some degree, O’Gara and La Rochelle have perhaps become a victim of their own successes. Having won a breakthrough Champions Cup and retained their title, as well as reaching semi-finals and two finals in the French Championship, the bar has been raised like never before in the club’s history.
But they’re also a relatively stable, well-run club and O’Gara must have plenty of credit in the bank. With Tawera Kerr-Barlow moving on for one final swansong at Stade Français, the brilliant young Racing 92 and French international scrumhalf Nolann le Garrec is joining next season, as is the exciting Georgian full-back Davit Niniashvili from Lyon.
[ Sam Prendergast’s next task is to make Leinster less predictableOpens in new window ]
Under contract with La Rochelle until 2027, O’Gara has, true to type, publicly stated his desire to be a head coach at Test level and aired his preference for Ireland, France or England.
With this tetchy rivalry against Leinster in mind, you’d hope that he hasn’t ruffled too many feathers in Irish rugby. You’d hope too that if he is to oversee an international side one day, that after all that knowledge he has accumulated in his playing and coaching career, it would be the one with whom he achieved so much.
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