Ronan O'Gara is the 'crazy Irishman' who has made La Rochelle live an impossible dream.
After scaling the European club rugby summit twice as a player, O'Gara did it again as a head coach in Marseille on Saturday night.
In his first season as La Rochelle's head coach, the 45-year-old has guided his club to a destination they never really believed in before his arrival as assistant to Jono Gibbes in 2019.
It was only five years before that the club won promotion from the Pro D2.
When he joined, he quickly assessed the situation. Beating Leinster to win a Champions Cup title wasn't on the agenda.
"No, way off," said O'Gara, hitting reflection mode as the Cup was placed in front of him at the post match press conference.
With the deep relationship he has enjoyed with the competition as Munster's no 10, he made it a priority to change that.
And, over time, he worked on the staff and the players to come around to fighting for glory on two fronts, the Top 14 and the Champions Cup.
"You could see it coming together," explained O'Gara.
"The boys were probably a bit shocked by how much I love the competition.
"It’s only when you go to France that you see what the bouclier (the Top 14 title) means. It’s a fantastic competition.
"It’s a marathon but they weren’t used to the Champions Cup.
"They didn’t play that many games in it up to 24 months ago so it was something a bit new to them and trying to create that mindset.
"The Top 14 was a marathon but the Champions Cup could be a sprint.
"Once you got a bit of a momentum they could see that yeah, this crazy Irishman knows what he is talking about and we could have a go at both.
"But you go to win your home games and your away games to win the Champions Cup and they were like, ‘coach, it’s not possible’.
"They got into it, really into it."
Last year, La Rochelle made it to the Champions Cup final - beating Leinster in the semis - and the Top 14 final, but lost both.
Tough lessons were learned but the defeats were hard to swallow all the same.
"It was obviously really hard because it was Covid rugby and there was no public there," he recalled of that Champions Cup final loss to Toulouse.
"But it’s a monumental day for the club.
"It was all about winning, finding a way to bring that cup back to La Rochelle.
"When Monday comes it's, ‘2022 La Rochelle’ on that cup.
"It’s a little surreal at the minute but we’ll enjoy it.”
Asked how it felt to win the crown as a head coach having done so in his playing days, O'Gara referenced the pride he had in his team shutting out Leinster's efforts to score a try.
You have to go back to 2009, when the tournament was still the European Cup, for the last time that happened in the play-offs.
“My immediate reaction is that I am the coach, the boys have accepted me, they might have found me a bit strict and difficult at the start, demanding, repetition, but I’ve got a really great group," he stated.
"I love going to the training ground, I love trying to stimulate them, I love trying to get the best out of them.
"It’s a group that just needed to be brought together a little bit and we needed to find the finishing line.
"That’s where the leaders became very important. They had enough of competing - they wanted to win.
"Leinster may have had one or two opportunities but I don’t think there was eight or 10 left out there, if I recall the game correctly.
"That sums up the want in this team, they wanted it for each other.
"I couldn’t recommend the place highly enough for holidays, a break. Come to La Rochelle, they are decent people, this will mean a lot to the supporters.
"It’s a club, can you believe, that had never won silverware - we will go home with the Champions Cup.
"It’s a special day, a special story. It really is. I’m buzzing. I’m not showing it but I am very, very, very proud of them.”
O'Gara says he felt the love from back home in the build up to La Rochelle's triumph over Leinster.
Having expressed sympathy with his Leinster coaching counterparts - he felt the same sense of loss himself after last year's decider - O'Gara said he had been bowled over by the messages of support he had received before the game.
“Ah yeah, there are plenty of WhatsApp groups I am in from teams I was involved in so the support I had from home has been unbelievable," said the former Cork Con, Munster and Ireland out-half who as a coach had previously worked with Racing in France and Crusaders in New Zealand before joining La Rochelle.
"My phone hasn’t stopped going.
"A lot of good people out there wishing me well - a lot of ex-teammates, a lot of guys that I played with and they appreciate what these boys do.
"It was interesting, I came across a decent Leinster supporter. He just said, 'no matter what happens those boys are a credit to you’.
"That’s important, that respect with how dominant Leinster have been.
"They have given people the passion and the drive, within us, to be as good as they are.
"We are a long way behind where they are but this is a great starting point for La Rochelle and it is important that we kick on.”
