Having come close to being hugely disillusioned with the bottle class of Toulouse to start 2025, Stade Rochelais got their hopes up again last Sunday during a high-level match against Leinster. His best performance in a long time, which sounds like a possible shift in a hitherto mixed season. The result of some internal developments.
Pouting after a victory against Toulouse, puffing out your chest in the wake of a defeat against Leinster… Has this Stade Rochelais lost its way at the start of 2025? Notwithstanding these postural considerations, imagine that on the contrary he seems able to find it again, according to the impression left last Sunday against the Irish (14-16), against whom Ronan O’Gara’s men, although thwarted in their European journey, won without much more than against the Toulouse kids, received a week earlier and pitifully beaten in the final action (22-19).
If the improvement requires confirmation, from Saturday in Treviso (6:30 p.m., 4e day of the Champions Cup) and while La Rochelle is preparing to make three trips in a row, it is in any case validating the recent internal adjustments. “Before this match, we could tell ourselves that we were far behind, being objective. I think we are on the right track here.supports opener Antoine Hastoy, although there is still a lot of work and confidence to be gained.”
O’Gara’s Callinotherapy
In the middle of last week, to the question “Is Ronan O’Gara capable of softening his management, as announced?”, Brice Dulin, who knows the person concerned better than anyone in La Rochelle, gave a smile. of the dubious kind. Still, the Irish manager, guilty in his eyes of having “jelly” many of his players lately, from “his demands and his speech”claims to be softening his method.
The limits of his “tough love” (“he who loves well, punishes well“) affected, “I have to hug them now.” et “control myself“, he wrote in his last column for the Irish Examiner, published on Sunday, titled “Time for a cuddle?” If history does not say whether “ROG” concretely linked the gesture to the word concerning Hastoy, “we found Antoine and that’s the most important thing”, he underlined in the wake of the stifling duel lost against Leinster (16-14), even though his number 10 – frisky for an hour – missed match points.
La positive attitude
Another source of the moment directly linked to the staff, to which “believe
Reason why, despite a chaotic outing against the Toulouse C team a few hours earlier, the video feedback targeted “around twenty positive actions, where we could have ended the blows, rembobine le pilier international Reda Wardi. We don’t do it and we send a very negative image to the people who observe us, but having seen all that during the week, we realized that we weren’t far away! Maybe some people doubt us, we are quite the opposite. We know what we are worth, the value of our group, our individualities. We have confidence in ourselves.”
Pride and pleasure made a priority
“I think the players took a lot of responsibility this week“, said Ronan O’Gara two days before the clash of the 3e Champions Cup day. No doubt he was thinking, among other things, of these numerous discussions linked “to the pride of the club in this competitionillustrious Dillyn Leyds. Everyone was ready, knew it was going to be a big fight. Leinster is almost like a test match. When we play like that, with the aggression and speed that we showed, that’s what La Rochelle is all about.”
“We wanted everyone to be proud of us, completes Thomas Lavault. And even prove to each other that we were capable, quite simply, that we could send each other for the other. It’s done, I think. The content is good. Looking at the past weeks, there is no photo. No matter how much we tell ourselves that we are focusing on ourselves, that we are not listening to what is being said… we do not remain indifferent to everything that may be said, we are keen to prove that it is false, We are men and we do not necessarily want our image to be violated as is the case at the moment. What if we had fun again? Downright. Personally, I took it. And we saw a collective emulation that we didn’t necessarily have on past weekends.”
Faster workouts
Last season, the gear lever was activated just after the Dublin spanking (40-13), in the quarter-final of the Champions Cup. This time, it was before hosting the same Leinster that the intensity went up a notch in training. From Monday, when Ronan O’Gara said he had “felt for the first time a different air in the group“, followed in the week by a “Awareness of our strengths.”
“We have to hold our speedinsisted Antoine Hastoy once the match had been played. We finally saw a little speed from our three-quarters, even in our lanes. I think that’s what makes us feel good about our game.” And his manager, moreover, to show his esteem for him : “Antoine has a speed that few 10 have in France. His difference is his ability to play duels, to take initiatives and to see spaces because he attacks very quickly. When he attacks like that, we are a different team.” A team which, according to O’Gara, “will realize that there is not too much of a gap between Leinster, Bordeaux, Toulouse and us.” On the sine qua non condition of maintaining this (re)emerging improvement.
Related News :