Former Ireland fly-half O’Gara, a two-time Heineken Champions Cup with Munster Rugby and the competition’s all-time leading points scorer, is looking to guide La Rochelle to send successive title this season.

The TOP 14 side welcome 2020 winners Exeter Chiefs to Bordeaux in the semi-finals this afternoon, and Atonio explained how the team will be fuelled by O’Gara’s love for the Heineken Champions Cup.

“Before he came to La Rochelle, the Heineken Champions Cup was just a competition where we used to bring some of the young guys up, but now we are looking at like an actual TOP 14 now,” the France international said.

“Everyone knows he has won it a couple of times – as a coach I think he wants to win it every year, he has no limit to this competition.

“He’s put a lot of emphasis on us playing this competition, clubs in France tended to struggle in this competition apart from Stade Toulousain, but now we’ve changed that.

“[We’ve] changed the way we train, changed the way we play, and you can see the way he has got us ready for games has changed over the last two or three years.

“We are playing these games like it’s a final every week. We are giving it everything.”

Atonio says that the possibility of securing successive Heineken Champions Cup titles is a tantalising prize, especially given the wild celebrations last year’s success sparked in the French coastal city.

“I think if we go back-to-back, I don’t even know what we would do anymore – last year we came on the bus, we might have to come on a plane or something,” he mused.

“I think even going back-to-back we’ll still have that little thing of saying now we need the three-peat, I think it will be unreal for the team, the club, the town, like everyone saw last year when we won it was. They'll make it a public holiday soon in La Rochelle.”

One player who is set to be key to La Rochelle’s hopes of retaining the Heineken Champions Cup is Levani Botia, the versatile Fijian who has been playing at openside flanker in recent weeks.

Atonio heaped praise on his 34-year-old teammate, who secured more turnovers (four) than any other player in the quarter-finals as La Rochelle dispatched of Saracens.

“Normally you’d have one or two big ball carriers in the team, but then you’ve got like a 12 like Jonathon Danty who’s a juggernaut, then you’ve got Levani Botia who has been playing 7 lately – he's quite good at jackaling,” Atonio said. “I think if you’re 9 and 10 in this team you can just play sitting down.

“Botia has no weaknesses, maybe jumping, although I think he’d be good at that if we could lift him. I think most teams don’t study him, I think they look at the big five in front and they always forget that we have that little vulture stealing everyone's balls and against Saracens they didn’t plan for that.

“He’s like a fine wine, the older he gets the better he is on the ground.”

Atonio believes facing Saracens in the previous round, as well as enjoying hard-fought wins over other Gallagher Premiership outfits in Northampton Saints and Gloucester Rugby earlier in competition will benefit La Rochelle coming into their huge clash with Exeter.

“Playing against those two English teams has been good, because we had Northampton in the pool stage who gave us a good go there,” he noted. “If we are not ready to start this game against Exeter, we’ll probably get pumped.”

Atonio went on to echo his teammate Will Skelton as he warned of the added motivation Exeter will have today given the number of their players who are playing their final seasons at the club.

“I think if it was my last season or if there was 19 players leaving I would want to play my heart out, you know what I mean?” he said.

“It’s a good group that has won a couple of big titles together and I think they’ll want to finish off with a cherry on top of the cake – so yeah, it will be a good mindset for them to come out firing.

“They are playing against us, we are relative newcomers to the competition – we won it last year but we are still a very young club in this competition.

“I think if I was in their shoes today I think they will start the game attacking us, they know how to play us, I think they’ve beaten us the last four times they’ve played us – so they know how to do it, they just have to turn up as well.”

There is no limit to what Stade Rochelais head coach Ronan O’Gara can achieve in the Heineken Champions Cup, according to the reigning champions’ prop Uini Atonio.