He is GOD!DENIS WALSH
Leinster’s Argentinian fly-half is often fiery but always flamboyant — and is happy to be part of a team that plays the game his way
The pivotal match of Leinster’s season was six minutes old and scoreless when they were awarded a penalty, 15 metres from their own line. As Felipe Contepomi gathered the ball the Bath players retreated, trusting in their understanding that there would be a clearing kick and an opposition lineout. They weren’t thinking, they were assuming. Contepomi could see it. How far would orthodoxy take Leinster? This was the moment to seize ownership of the match. Now. From here.
One of Contepomi’s teammates sensed his intent and computed the danger. He shouted at him to stop but Contepomi ignored the plea. He tapped the penalty and lit the fuse. The fly-half didn’t touch the ball again before Shane Horgan scored under the posts but his fingerprints were all over it.
With Leinster’s survival in the Heineken Cup on the line, Contepomi had chosen the music: a symphony.
“It’s one of those things that can go either way,” he says now, with an implied shrug. “The way we play, if you don’t take risks you’ll never know where you can go. I wouldn’t say it was the craziest thing to do. That’s the way we want to play, quick tap, play, play, be dynamic. It can happen that many times it will go wrong. Fine, I don’t care if it goes wrong — it is best to do what you really believe.”
Leinster torpedoed Bath with three tries in the first 15 minutes and the second was scored by the fly-half. The travelling Leinster supporters were be- hind that goal and Contepomi ran to greet them, pitching his knees on the shallow ledge of the advertising hoarding and extending his arms, like the Angel of the North, or Michael Crawford in Condorman.
For Contepomi, this was a muted crowd scene. Once, in his Bristol days, he scored all of their points in a Zurich Premiership semi-final against Northampton. After one of his tries he ran into the stand, plucked a youngster from the crowd, put him on his knee and started clapping in mock self-appreciation.
The club photographer captured the image and it became a poster in the team’s marketing campaign. The message was simple: if you need a reason to watch Bristol, there is no better reason than Contepomi.
On their day this season Leinster have been a joy to see — expressive, exuberant — and on those days Contepomi has been the pulse of their play. The new management wanted the team to play with freedom and in the process they liberated the fly-half and empowered him.
It is hard to believe now that only a year ago he was so far from the heart of this team. Declan Kidney had a different vision of how Leinster should play and Contepomi didn’t fit. When everybody was available the Argentinian was out of the team. Dispensible. Dispensed.
“It’s been said by Kidney that I’m a very good player, but he didn’t field me much. Last year was frustrating; training hard, trying to do everything and not getting the games. It’s nothing personal. I didn’t ask for an explanation. Some people feel happier having an explanation — I will never go and ask for an explanation because I feel it will be an excuse.
“He has a rugby style and coaches like some players. Look at the style Munster play with Kidney. Fair enough, it works for them. My question is, how much people enjoy that kind of rugby and how much the players enjoy it? It wouldn’t suit me, for example, playing in a kicking-role No 10. If people on the team believe that’s their style, fine, go and play.
“What matters is you are convinced of what you are doing. But the way I feel rugby is the way we’re trying to play it here.”
FELIPE CONTEPOMI re- moves his dark shades and long hooded coat, releases his neck from a navy tie and opens the top button of his shirt. It is late afternoon on Wednesday and his day has reached another bridge. This morning he trained with Leinster, this afternoon his medical training took him into the field with a GP, this evening his apprenticeship as a father continues. Baby Catalina is just a few weeks old: at that age, it’s all about a good feed and safe hands. Basics. It is six years since he left Buenos Aires to play rugby in this part of the world. He was already an international by then with four years of university behind him and enough roots to hold him there. There was no professional game in his homeland and it was only a couple of years since the Argentine authorities had lifted their veto on professionals representing the national team. Augustin Pichot was one of the players who forced the union to swallow their objections and it was Pichot who lured Contepomi to Bristol. “He told me he was going to sort out my study,” he says with a smile. “He never did.”
Bristol was a mixed experience. In Contepomi’s final year the owner signalled his intention to freeze his investment and the team spiralled towards relegation. It was a team of stars but self-interest corrupted the dressing room in the end. So, the Argentinian moved to another team of stars.
What he knew of Leinster didn’t stretch to the local stereotyping, but he quickly learnt. It bristles with him now: the labels, the institutionalised doubting. “Myself, I feel insulted. It’s a cliché that Munster are the tough guys and we’re the softies from D4 or whatever. They’re all clichés. When they play for Ireland nobody says that O’Driscoll comes from D4. From what I can see many of the Leinster players take the lead with Ireland, being the toughest guys — look at Malcolm O’Kelly, look at Drico, D’Arcy, Shaggy (Shane Horgan). They are from Leinster and you wouldn’t say they are soft. What makes them change? The shirt? No.”
Leinster’s recurring failure to consummate their potential, though, is a different matter. In his mind the diagnosis and the treatment are clear. Four coaches in four years: crazy. International players going missing for weeks on end: lunacy. A debased, discredited Celtic League: suicide.
“Our best players, they go for Ireland and we haven’t seen them for nine weeks. In 10 days we have the most important game of the season. How do you prepare for that game? They come in with their heads full of other patterns for the last nine weeks and it’s difficult to switch them on. I think it has to be reassessed. The Irish players playing in England, when they don’t have an international game they go back and train with their team.
“Also, if you want to win the Heineken Cup you have to have a strong home competition. You can see in England and France that the teams doing well in their local competition are the ones that get to the (Heineken Cup) final. It’s not about showing up one day in the Heineken Cup and saying, ‘Now perform — and if you don’t perform, you’re under-achievers.’
“Toulouse, when they played Stade Francais for a League game, attracted a crowd of 80,000 people. State Francais played two weeks ago against Biarritz, 79,000 people. For Toulouse the quarter-finals will be like another game. For Leinster, it’s a revolution! “People have been speaking about the Toulouse game for the last two months since we qualified and what happened? We didn’t perform against the Dragons, we didn’t perform against Connacht. Yeah, fine, Toulouse, fine — but it’s in two months’ time. Forget about it. Rugby is week-in, week-out.”
Leinster’s inconsistency threatened to destroy their season before Christmas. The home defeat by Bath in the opening pool match in October rattled everybody. Play the same game now, Contepomi says, and Leinster would win by 20 points.
He couldn’t have done any more on that disappointing night. In Brian O’Driscoll’s enforced absence he was made captain at the beginning of the season and the appointment stood as both a compliment and a policy statement: here’s our man, doing our thing.
Looking from a distance, though, it was easy to wonder about his temperament for every aspect of the role. Sitting here, in civilian life, he is engaging and laid-back; on the field he shifts to a war footing and growls.
“When the game starts I transform myself. Sometimes I get too passionate and I speak the same way to a referee as I do to a teammate. I presume it’s the nature of competitiveness. You have to see me playing with my twin brother (Manuel) — swearing at each other. We can swear at each other and then the ball comes and we’re fine. That’s the way I am and I know it’s so different here.
“Some people, if you tell them something in an elevated tone, they will get angry with you and they won’t accept it. In Argentina, if you say something to someone they will reply, ‘F*** off,’ or whatever. Here, no. People will take it bad. But I was much worse when I came to Bristol. I think I learnt a lot.”
His difficulties with Leinster last season had no effect on his international standing. During the six years that Marcello Loffredo has been in charge of the Pumas, nobody has been capped more often than Contepomi.
For the match against the Lions at the end of last season Loffredo made him captain and against South Africa Contepomi delivered a tour de force. There are two Player of the Year awards in Argentine rugby and he won both in 2005.
Argentina play very few Tests where they start as favourites. From that comes an attitude. You mention Leinster’s poor record against French teams away from home. He can’t deny it, but why should they be bound by it? “I’m not a great believer in statistics. I’m more a great believer in performance. People who write history, they write it on the day. You have to bear in mind that we haven’t played our best in France but Munster have a broadly good record and they still lost last year in a quarter-final (away to Biarritz).
“Coming from Argentina you must believe in performance. We’re not better than France. We’re not even near them — but the last four games we’ve beaten them. How can you explain that? Because on the day we played better than them. No more. Before the game they were better than us and after the game they were better — but for those 80 minutes, anything can happen.”
From Contepomi, that’s a promise.
