He's back. Again.
Today’s Heineken Champions Cup final stands alone as a fitting climax to the European rugby season but also doubles up as the latest chapter in the famed Leinster-Ronan O'Gara story and while there have been ups and downs for the Munster legend, he’s certainly had the upper hand over the last two years.
In his 16 years as a Munster player he faced Leinster 28 times, winning 13, losing 14 and drawing once.
But when you add in the two games where he has coached La Rochelle to victory over Leinster, it moves him to just over a 50% return.
ROG has had Leinster’s number since his second game as a professional, helping Munster to a 15-12 win in a Musgrave Park mud bath in August 1997.
His match-clinching try in the 2006 Heineken Cup semi-final at Lansdowne Road remains an indelible symbol of the days when Munster lorded it over Leinster.
Shaping to pass on the 22 before fending off a Malcolm O’Kelly tackle-attempt, O’Gara sauntered towards the tryline, enough time to raise an arm in celebration before he even crossed the whitewash.
He had gone from a canter to a trot by the time he dotted the ball down and the hurdle of the advertising board towards the south terrace was to join the Munster faithful in celebration, nothing to do with avoiding a crash.
As the tide turned he was still a central figure, famously at the end of a goading from Johnny Sexton as Leinster celebrated Gordon D'Arcy's try in the 2009 semi-final and then cutting a forlorn figure as he chased after Brian O'Drsicoll who had picked off O'Gara's pass.
Even when Leinster gained the upper hand in the relationship, O’Gara could still prove to be a pebble in the blue boot.
He converted the late try that sealed the 2011 Celtic League Grand Final. Just a week after Joe Schmidt had led Leinster to their second European title, O’Gara and Munster summoned enough fight to let a bit of air out of the bubble.
His decision to quit playing at the end of the 2013 season and make the move to Paris to coach with Racing 92 took O’Gara out of Leinster’s orbit. For a spell.
The teams’ paths did not cross in the four seasons O’Gara spent in France and he had departed for Crusaders, where he helped the Canterbury side to two Super Rugby titles, by the time Leinster faced Racing in the 2018 final in Bilbao.
He first moved to La Rochelle as head coach under director of rugby Jono Gibbes and it wasn’t long before the battle with the old foe was rejoined.
A French division two outfit as recently as 2014, La Rochelle made it to the 2021 semi-final, their first time to reach the last four, where they hosted Leinster, minus the injured Johnny Sexton, in an empty Stade Marcel Deflandre.
Leo Cullen’s side, beaten finalists in 2019 and knocked out again by Saracens in 2020, came into the game as heavy favourites and felt that the absence of fans would go some way towards negating home advantage.
But Stade Rochelais had other ideas and after they took the lead in the 56th minute, they never looked back and the 32-23 scoreline was coloured by Ross Byrne’s late converted try.
Once again it was ROG coming back to haunt his old friends from Dublin.
And he was able to repeat the trick, this time as director of rugby after Gibbes’ departure when Les Maritimes reached last season’s final.
Leinster again arrived to Marseille as favourites having dispatched holders Toulouse in devastating fashion in the semi-final.
La Rochelle, meanwhile, had scrapped and scraped to beat Racing 92 in the other semi-final, doing just enough to get over the line but their 12-point underdog status for the final looked about right.
It was a lead-in that suited O’Gara and his plot perfectly.
Statistically, it was a game that Leinster should not have lost.
They conceded six turnovers to La Rochelle’s 10 and conceded 11 penalties to 13 for the French side, who had to play with 14 players between the 63rd and 73rd minute when Thomas Lavault was sin-binned for the most idiotic trip imaginable.
The four-time champs trailed for just 10 minutes in the entire match before Arthur Retiere struck the killer blow with the last play of the game.
But Leinster, scorer of 47 tries in their run to that final, failed to score a five-pointer with all of their scores coming from penalties.
On another day, as happened in the final against Racing 92 in 2018, that might have done the trick and no one would have appreciated winning the cup with 'cup rugby’ more than O’Gara, a master tactician and the competition’s record points scorer with 1,365.
"As a player, he was very intelligent and the ruthless side of our game is that one of us is going to be happy, the two of us can't be," said O'Gara about Cullen, who won 24 of his 32 Ireland caps alongside the out-half.
"One of us is going to be down for a period of time, then you pick yourself up and go again. He has seen how that works."
Munster’s URC semi-final win over Leinster last weekend was a real throwback to the days when the rivalry was at its greatest and no one on the Munster team from that era epitomised the antagonism between the teams more than O’Gara.
A thrilling high-quality affair was decided with a late dropgoal. Even Jack Crowley’s finger-wag celebration echoed O’Gara’s famous reaction to his Grand Slam-winning kick in 2009.
Coming exactly one week before O'Gara returns to the Dublin venue where he won 31 matches for Ireland during his playing career, it seems fitting that the bite, missing for a long spell, is back in the fixture.
Leinster were as sick as parrots to have left that fifth star behind last year and the fact that it was orchestrated by O’Gara only made it worse for the blue fans.
As for a magic formula for beating Leinster, O'Gara refused to bite.
"I don't look upon it like that, genuinely," the 46-year-old said as he cheekily sported a red hoodie in the pre-match press conference. The turquoise one was in the wash, apparently.
"Two games over whatever, 60-game period is pretty irrelevant to me."
Leinster can put an end to the O'Gara hoodoo today but it will take something special.
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Watch the Champions Cup final, Leinster v La Rochelle, on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player from 4pm, follow a live blog on the RTÉ News app or RTÉ.ie/Sport or listen to live commentary on Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
