A four-year extension is judged less on the titles already won than on what still needs fixing. At La Rochelle, two problem areas jump out as soon as you line up the numbers from the last five seasons.

Four more seasons, and ten years in total

Ronan O’Gara has extended his contract with Stade Rochelais by four seasons. Having arrived on the Atlantic coast in 2019 as an assistant and taken over as head coach in the summer of 2021, the Irishman will stay in charge until 2031, ten years at the helm and twelve at the club. Few head coaches in France are given that kind of tenure, and the question raised by such a long extension is not about the titles already won but about what still needs fixing.

A solid overall record, and one number that skews it

Since July 2021, La Rochelle have played 138 Top 14 matches, knockout stages included, with 77 wins, 2 draws and 59 defeats, a 55.8% win rate. The figure shifts slightly depending on the cut-off: starting from O’Gara’s arrival at the club in 2019, it rises to 56.8%, and counting only the regular season since 2021 also gives 56.8%. The 57% quoted elsewhere falls within the same range, the difference coming only from the chosen starting date.

That average, however, combines two realities that have almost nothing in common. At Deflandre, La Rochelle have won 55 of their 67 matches, or 82.1%. Away from home, 22 out of 71, or 31%. Fifty-one percentage points separate the two, and the imbalance runs through every one of the five seasons without exception: four wins from fourteen away trips in the first year, seven from fourteen in the year of the European double, then two from fifteen, three from thirteen and five from fourteen. The start of the 2026-27 season follows the same pattern, with a hard-fought win in Toulon and another at home against Stade Toulousain.

Two perfect European seasons, then a long decline

In the Champions Cup, the overall record stands at 22 wins and 9 defeats from 32 matches, a 68.8% win rate. But that average hides a clear break, and it is probably the most telling number of the O’Gara era.

Across the two title-winning seasons, 2021-22 and 2022-23, La Rochelle won sixteen of their seventeen European matches without losing any: nine matches, eight wins and a draw in the first year, then eight matches and eight wins in the second. Since then, over three seasons, the club have won six out of fifteen, in a sequence that leaves little room for doubt: three from six, then two from five, then one from four. Even the number of European matches has shrunk from nine to four, which points to earlier and earlier exits.

In the league, one final, and Toulouse in the way three times

Both titles of the O’Gara era are therefore European. In the Top 14, La Rochelle finished fifth, second, fifth, seventh and sixth in the regular season: only once in the top two, only once outside the top six.

Their knockout record amounts to six matches and reads almost like an obsession. A play-off lost in Toulouse in 2022, 28-33. A semi-final won against UBB in 2023, 24-13, then a final lost to Toulouse, 26-29. A play-off won in Toulon in 2024, 34-29, then a semi-final lost to Toulouse, 23-39. No knockout stage in 2025, and a play-off lost at Stade Français last June, 5-45. Stade Toulousain have knocked La Rochelle out three times in five years, in three different rounds, and the club have only once gone all the way to the league final, only to lose it.

What the contract needs to fix

League output, on the other hand, has never wavered: fifteen wins in 2021-22, eighteen in 2022-23, fourteen, thirteen, then fifteen last season. Never fewer than thirteen, never more than eighteen. That is a foundation, and it may well be that foundation the board wanted to secure until 2031.

That leaves the two curves around it, which are heading the wrong way: away form, which has never taken off, and Europe, which has been sliding for three years. The four extra seasons given to O’Gara will show which of the two he can turn around.