La Rochelle will have to beat Leinster again to secure a spot in the Champions Cup semi-final. Leinster aims to win the competition for the third time as a coach.
Two seasons ago, La Rochelle won a home quarter-final and a semi-final against Racing in neutral Lens before beating Leinster in Marseille. Last season they plotted a home route all the way to the final, where they beat Leinster again in Dublin, having been 17-0 and 23-6 down.
“They have their ambitions, and we respect that, but this team has done immense things and I don’t think we’re anywhere near our potential. So that excites me, but we’re aware that home advantage is huge and we need to be near our best.” “So, that was in our planning to give ourselves the best preparation. We had a light week but we got extremely well looked after in Fota. It’s a brilliant venue. The weather was miserable but Con were great, Fota was great.
“No, because it is an unbelievable spectacle and it has done so much for the competition. There are tiny margins in the games. The Covid game at home for us was probably the one where we played near our best rugby and it was a 20-point difference until Leinster scored a late consolation score,” OGara said, recalling his side’s relatively commanding 32-23 win at an empty Stade Deflandre three years ago, in a manner which suggested he’d been reminding his players of that day.
Nine of Leinster’s starting team, and 14 of their match-day squad, played a part in Ireland’s 38-17 win over France in Marseille on opening night in the Six Nations, and O’Gara could not dispute that this was a boost for Leinster, albeit he found a way to downplay its significance. “That’s has to be the goal of my team because we have the best of international players, and we have the best of French players, so we should be as good as any test team.”
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