JIMMY O’BRIEN’S FIRST taste of a Champions Cup final was a difficult one to stomach, the province leading La Rochelle right until the 78th minute before seeing victory snatched away at Marseille’s Stade Vélodrome last Saturday.

It was a disappointing ending to what was a breakthrough season for O’Brien on the European stage.

After the game, O’Brien sat in “100% the worst” changing room he’s experienced post-match before friends and family tried to do that thing that friends and family do is such situations, telling him he could be proud of his own performance on the day.

“My girlfriend tried telling me that and I told her I would have taken playing the worst game of my career if we had won,” O’Brien says.

“I would have taken a red card, doing everything bad, missing every tackle, dropping every ball if we had just won. So yeah, it’s very, very difficult (to process).”

Almost a week later, it’s still tricky to properly label Leinster’s latest European setback. The province never really fired on all cylinders and were outscored 3-0 by La Rochelle in terms of tries, but still they came within two minutes of landing a fifth Champions Cup title. 

Hold out, and Leinster are lauded for adapting their gameplan and getting the win. However defeat leaves the door open to questions about the province’s approach on the day. Their defensive effort was outstanding, but at the other end of the pitch Leo Cullen’s side were surprisingly off-colour, while their tactic of kicking points rather than heading for the corner seemed out of step with their thinking for most of the season.

“I think in those big games, La Rochelle are a good team, we’re a good team, it comes down to tiny margins and there were a couple of times when we had a chance to score a try, if we had taken that maybe we might have won,” O’Brien continues.

“But like, I thought we did pretty much everything right, right up to the 78th minute.

Even with that we were defending our line for 10 minutes – and that’s hard to do, to keep a team out for 10 minutes – and there was just too much time in the end, we couldn’t get out of our own half.

“Maybe in the off-season is when I’ll look back on it (in a more positive light) but at the moment it’s still pretty raw, I wanted us to win and everyone in the building did, we were so focused on winning it.”

In Marseille O’Brien was required to play a very different type of game to the one he has become accustomed to, being part of a Leinster side that has become so used to winning, and often winning well.

O'Brien competes in the air with La Rochelle's Brice Dulin. Billy Stickland / INPHO Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO

With Leinster enjoying just 39% of the possession, the winger didn’t see as much of the ball as he would have liked and had to chip in with 10 tackles – a season high for the 24-year-old – including a vital tackle to deny Pierre Bourgarit while also driving Gregory Alldritt into touch, and he was kept busy throughout by the electric Raymond Rhule, who skipped inside him for La Rochelle’s opening score.

“Honestly I would say that before most games I play in I concentrate on my defence for the most part, because obviously I’m not the biggest winger compared to James Lowe or someone like that, so when they look at me they probably go, ‘Oh yeah, I can run at this lad’.

So I actually concentrate quite a lot on defence and would get quite annoyed if I missed a tackle. I don’t know how many tackles I made but it felt like a lot, my body definitely felt it that it was a lot! I put a lot of emphasis on my defence anyway before games.

“Look, there were chances to score and we got the penalty advantages and stuff like that. When we took the penalties at the time it felt like the right decision to go for three (points).

“When you look back at it now, you think, ‘Oh yeah, we should have went for a try because we would have won then’ but during the game I felt it was the right decision going for three and keep the scoreboard ticking over.

“We built up a lead, I think we went eight points up after 50-something minutes, so yeah it’s easy to say now we should have went for tries but at the time I thought the right decision was made.”

Tomorrow’s United Rugby Championship quarter-final meeting with Glasgow Warriors at the RDS is now huge for the province as the look to ensure they stay on track to end the season with another league title.

“They’re a good side, a very good side. Tough to play against,” O’Brien adds.

“The one game that stands out in my mind is that Rainbow Cup game last year when we were over there and they beat us (15-12). I think I was playing left wing that day and they really got into us and got a good win out of it and that really pissed us off, we were very frustrated.

“They’ve strengths all over the park. Personally, I’ve been looking at their backs a lot more so their 10, Ross Thompson, is a very good left footer, he’s come on. He’s very young but he has taken the reins now and starts week in, week out for them. I know the young full-back, Ollie Smith, he’s been good this season.

“So they have a lot of threats all over the park. I know it’s going to be a very tough game.”

- Originally published at 07.15 

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