I have never seen a madder coach than Guy Noves. Neither have I ever seen a man who better embodies what rugby is all about; as Anthony Foley once perfectly put it, “a street fight with a ball”. He eats, breathes, lives and dies (and in a close match, the last three all at once) Stade Toulousain.

And the way that Stade Toulousain, a team as multi-national as any other in the T14, play, is why Guy Noves is a man who, quite apart from his long lunches, marc and Gauloises, is the epitome of all things glorious about France, a man who should have been analysed like steak frites in essays by Barthes, a man who deserves to be buried in the Pantheon.

Because, if you look at Toulouse when they click, you see the essence of why the world loves, fears and needs French rugby. Look at them in the semi-final. Half-asleep, half-adrift, in trouble – but then; suddenly, they get the ball, and they attack. One scissors move, is okay – but then the second one comes off. And if you grew up in the era of proper French rugby, you recognise the harbinger of doom, because once a real French team pulls off two scissors moves in one phase, all bets are off. Suddenly the ball moves across the line faster than you ever thought, and it works so perfectly, so inimitably, so immaculately, so French. Like the DS, the Concorde, the TGV, it’s perfection in form and function that can only be summed up as – élan. It’s what gave us the Try from the End of the World, it’s what gave the world Serge Blanco working magic on Pernod and Gauloises, it’s what gave us the French scoring tries from behind their own goal line.

When it happens, there isn’t a team in the world can stand against it. And there isn’t a rugby fan in the world who won’t applaud it for the high art that it is.

It’s what we’ve missed for a long, long time during the long dark night of the soul that was Laporte.

The current French management show signs of turning back to what made France French. But even they need to learn what Noves has always known, and always aimed for in his Toulouse teams; that for every Vincent Clerc, you need a Trevor Brennan. Piano-players and piano-shifters; the unspeakable producing the immaculate.

There are teams whose rugby, although I like their fans, I hate. There are teams whose fans I like and for whose rugby I have the admiration of acknowledgement, that they will do whatever it takes, but at least have the strength of character to openly admit that they will stoop to conquer. But for Toulouse, my admiration is unbounded. They will live and die by the sword, but they will always, always, stay true to the cause of proper French rugby, the good, the bad and the ugly (and long may all three prosper). And that’s because that’s how Guy Noves coaches them, how he makes them play, how he can make a North Dublin nut-job like Trevor Brennan into a man who sneakingly wishes he was born a Munsterman, but is now heart and soul committed to everything that he wasn’t before he went there. Who can make Trevor Brennan look at rugby like a Frenchman.

A man, in short, for whom all of us who love rugby should be thankful.

To quote PdP (whose howls of rage at being used to approve the fancy-dans from the big city of the Gaillac would echo like a maddened wolf along the gorge of the Tarn):

France is no different from other teams, there have been dry spells and there have been times when Lady Good Fortune decided to put on her golden bikini and rub her tits in our face. But! No matter how good or bad we have been, no matter how low or high in spirits, there has always been this little spark, this little je-ne-sais-quoi, this little “fuck this, let’s run this thing all the way up the pitch for giggles” kind of thing. It didn’t always work. It didn’t always make us win games but boy, was it entertaining to watch.”

And that’s what Guy Noves’ Toulouse give the world.

I hope we beat them; I’m seriously scared, and honestly think we’re firmly underdogs. I think we’ve become what we always wanted to be, more like them, and our homegrown guys being trained up by the expats will come good, and better, and make us even more expansive while keeping the esprit des cloches that’s so important to us, the honesty of purpose we’ve always loved in our rugby and the edge we’ve learned the hard way. But I was there in 2000, and in 2003 and I can say this; win or lose, I will never begrudge Toulouse anything as long as they play true to themselves – like a team playing the way their coach sees rugby.

M. Noves – chapeau!