Ronan O'Gara: Munster can be hopping mad but the deck is stacked with Leinster aces

It’s a win-win all the way here. He has his Meath connections anyway but for Jordie it’s an opportunity to refresh, to stimulate, and it’s all upside for All Black coach Scott Robertson who gets a player back for the 2027 World Cup with some new ideas in his locker.

For All Blacks taking a sabbatical from Super Rugby, the easy money is in Japan, but Barrett has chosen to take himself out of the comfort zone. This is essentially an All Black joining the Irish rugby team.

To describe Leinster thus won’t go down a treat with people in Munster but that doesn’t make it any less true. There is a fevered debate ongoing at home around the Leinster-isation of Irish rugby, and the fact a lot of the game’s finances are hovered up in the east of the country.

The transfer of RG Snyman from Munster to Leinster is only going to feed the sense of injustice down south. That a programme already weighted towards the capital can create, partly through central contracting, a financial situation where Leinster have the wherewithal to nab one of Munster’s biggest assets is - not to put too fine a point on it - the biggest kick in the bollocks I can remember for a province since the game went professional in this country.

Isn’t it, though? I look at some of his touches last Saturday in Pretoria for Munster in their handsome win over the Bulls, and what he has done in a South Africa shirt, and it’s small wonder the Munster faithful must think they’ve trodden on someone’s black cat.

Notwithstanding that, undeniable fact and financial reality need to be stirred into the mix here.

For starters, this is nothing new. Leinster’s rising pre-eminence on the field and in terms of resources, has been surging since I retired over a decade ago.

Secondly, the rise and rise of the Leinster schools and Academy systems in now being seen, in real terms, to be worth their weight in gold. If the best players are produced through the Leinster Academy and are playing for Ireland and are worthy of the central contract (nine of the 12 as things stand, and soon to be ten), then how does one hold the IRFU culpable for that?

In ballpark terms, there's around five million euros worth of central IRFU contracts going on Leinster players, affording sizeable wiggle room to Leinster when it comes to fluttering their eyes at a potential signing like Snyman – not to mention those already under contract at the province.

With commercial opportunities aplenty in the capital and laminated ‘sold-out’ signs always near at hand for the big games – like May’s Champions Cup semi-final against Northampton - this Leinster gravy train isn’t pulling into a station any time soon. Get used to it Munster. And Ulster, and Connacht.

I went through the list myself last week for reasons that are not the business of this column. Porter, Kelleher, Sheehan, Furlong, Ryan, McCarthy, Doris, Baird, Conan and Josh Van der Flier. Then there’s Gibson Park, Ross Byrne, Henshaw, Ringrose, Jimmy O’Brien, James Lowe, Hugo Keenan. I’m pretty sure every one of them went to the World Cup with Ireland last autumn. And that doesn’t include Healy or Johnny Sexton. Nor does it include Larmour, Frawley, Harry Byrne, Ala'alatoa, Ngatai, Jenkins, Will Connors, Luke McGrath, Osborne, Penney, Ruddock, Deegan. Shall I go on?

People talk in facile terms about the money washing around France’s Top 14, but rest assured, no one in the Leinster squad is going poor any time soon. It is a fantastic position to be in. I’m not pleading the poor mouth here either. But I know well what the business end of a straitjacket looks like too.

LA ROCHELLE'S response to losing heavily to Leinster in the Champions Cup quarters at the Aviva was to improve offensively away to Castres – albeit at a lower level – but defend like 12-year-olds in another one-point defeat last Saturday.

It’s been instructive watching the fallout from our first knockout loss in Europe in three years because with such a diversity of cultures in the dressing room, everyone grieves differently. And some don’t grieve at all. On the outside, some fellas might seem as if they are doing ok, but inside they can be burning up. 

Losing by a point in Castres is a two-sided coin. We have eight or nine bonus defensifs, or losing BPs. Which means you are in five points of the winners on the day. It’s easy enough turn that into a positive. A little percentage more from each player is the difference.

But the flip side is why aren’t those games being turned into two point wins? We have created a record number of knockout wins in the Europe, so why not the same ability to get over the line at home. The truth is there is still a basic lack of consistency to what we are doing.

And some of that’s on me. In the lead-up to the Leinster game, I focused a lot of strategy around Ross Byrne and how we could derail Leinster through him. On the day, the Leinster out-half was excellent, everything he touched turned to gold. I had advised my players differently and I have to take some heat for that. Now, we never made him doubt, he spent his day on the front foot. But the thought must have seeped – in fact it did – into our players’ heads as he went from strength to strength: ‘what was ROG talking about with this guy’? Now we didn’t have enough ball, but on that score, I have to put my hand up and take responsibility.

That said, I would still go back with the same plan if we were going at Leinster this weekend but credit to Ross Byrne, he is much better with the ball than I gave him credit for.

Going down the tunnel at the break, I was pleased, bordering on delighted. We’d come back from 17-0 down to get a try off a driving maul, which is a big physical statement. Now we are ten down and have done absolutely nothing. If we score next, they are going to be getting tight-assed. And given the history between the teams, the more it becomes an arm wrestle, the more Leinster are thinking, ‘these f*ckers are not going away’. 

Then straight after the break we miss a key tackle on Ryan Baird and a weakness spread through us like a virus. It was horrible, but Leinster were rampant and fully deserving of their victory.

There is one small chink of upside to relinquishing our Champions Cup crown. Training weeks where we can get down and dirty instead of prepping for a semi-final and final. And La Rochelle needs every one of those opportunities if we want to create history and win a first Bouclier.

As some people in Cork might have seen when we trained in Cork Con, the opportunities to make substantive progress week-on-week are frustratingly limited. Train on Tuesday. If they want to get better, are they going to do so with a review video on a Thursday? Chances are you’ve missed the window there. In all the good environments I’ve played and coached in, all the best conversations and improvements take place in one-on-one meetings over a coffee. These chats become the equivalent of slow-motion walk-throughs on what we have enacted in training or discussed as a group. Success creates its own problems in that regard, but I could do more too, driving more of these unofficial and informal chats. They’re priceless. Sometimes we becomes slaves to scheduling and structure, to sports science and stopwatches.

It boils down to two 40-minute sessions in the week against that backdrop of realising the player is interested by the game, not by training. But then how do you get growth into a player. That is the conundrum?

The couple of weeks we get back from not being in a Champions Cup semi or final are unbelievably important for a squad that, realistically, only got back together as a unit the week before the Stormers round of 16 game. Even with a full training week before Castres, we were a lot better with the ball. We will be better again on Sunday.

Tomorrow, I’ll hopefully be watching Munster back up that sweet win at Loftus Versfield. It brought me full circle to the salient point: it all comes down to cattle. Look at that team compared to the side that finished against Northampton.

A different animal.