THIS IS NOT ABOUT ROG VERSUS ME
Contepomi insists it’s only the teams that matter ahead of final
FELIPE CONTEPOMI and Ronan O’gara were bitter foes as players.
And now the former will sign off from Leinster against his old rival in the upcoming Champions Cup final.
Contepomi, 44, is reuniting with his former Leinster head coach Michael Cheika (below) in the summer as together they look to revive Argentina’s fortunes.
But the cultured former out-half, centre and winger is only focused on the end game of his final campaign as Leinster backs coach, a role he took on ahead of the 2018-19 season.
And as things have turned out it is O’gara, as La Rochelle’s head coach, who stands in the way of Contepomi and a glorious finale in Europe in Marseille on Saturday week.
“It’s not about Ronan O’gara or myself,” argued the former
Pumas star. “It’s Leinster against La Rochelle.
“That’s the perception, even the press sometimes used to put it like O’gara-contepomi when it was Munster-leinster or Argentina-ireland and so on but for me it was important that there were two teams coming together and it’s the teams that matter most.
“ROG is a great coach. He’s doing a great career and I think he’s brought La Rochelle to a very good point.
“He has his tactics, his strategies and his philosophy and we have ours here.
“On that day it will be us trying to impose our philosophy over theirs and that’s a full stop.
“It’s not about O’gara against Leinster because he played in Munster or he is from Munster. It’s nothing to do with that.
“Those are the stories that people want to hear but for us it’s more like what do we need to do to get that fifth star on our jersey.”
Leinster look a stronger, better outfit than they did in last year’s semi-final loss to the Top 14 side.
Crucially, they also have Johnny Sexton fit and firing after he missed that disappointing defeat.
As for resurgent Leinster’s chances, Contepomi stressed:
“We had two good games in the quarter-final and semi-final but it starts from zero and it will be another opposition, it will be completely different, it will be another occasion.
“So I don’t know if we are in a better position, but I like to think we’ve made progress and evolved, that we’re a better team than we were last year.
“But then you have to wait until that day to see how you rolled into that week.
“We’re in a good moment and we’ll keep on trucking. That’s all that we can do, all we can control.”