{"id":278504,"date":"2026-01-11T00:11:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T00:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/278504\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T00:11:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T00:11:20","slug":"harry-byrne-the-hero-as-leinster-survive-la-rochelle-onslaught-to-edge-champions-cup-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/278504\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Byrne the hero as Leinster survive La Rochelle onslaught to edge Champions Cup classic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Leinster 25 La Rochelle 24\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Leinster players celebrate after Harry Byrne, centre, converted an 80th minute penalty to give his side a 25-24 victory during the Champions Cup match against La Rochelle at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo: Seb Daly\/Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Sports3318851.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Leinster players celebrate after Harry Byrne, centre, converted an 80th minute penalty to give his side a 25-24 victory during the Champions Cup match against La Rochelle at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo: Seb Daly\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">This competition doesn\u2019t deserve these two. Once again, in the depth of rugby\u2019s bleak midwinter, they served up a game for the ages that was settled by a kick at the death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Harry Byrne was the hero, kicking an injury-time penalty that even Ronan O\u2019Gara would grudgingly respect in front of Andy Farrell and Johnny Sexton, who will have taken note.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leinster 25 La Rochelle 24 Leinster players celebrate after Harry Byrne, centre, converted an 80th minute penalty to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,12861,15,16,5,4934,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-278504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-leinster-rugby","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-ruaidhri-oconnor","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115873571359730520","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}