INTERVIEW - GUY NOVES:CONVENTIONAL WISDOM has it that a coach shouldn't, ideally, stay in the same place for more than four years or so.
But Guy Noves doesn't really do conventional anything. He has ruled the Toulouse roost for a scarcely credible 15 years now, and more in keeping with a football manager than the modern-day, ultra-removed coach who communicates by modern technology from behind a glass box, Noves patrols the touchline and cajoles his players in animated form for every minute of every single game.
He's old school, yet new school too.
Much like Alex Ferguson at Manchester United or Arsène Wenger at Arsenal, he bestrides Stade Toulousain like a colossus. Like them, Noves clearly shares an indefatigable energy, fuelled by the desire for trophies, but achieved with a certain élan as well.
Noves has an aura and personality about him that is exceptional. A fitness fanatic, with his slim physique, slightly drawn face and slick-backed hair, even at a scarcely credible 53, he has the look of a French movie star. Wearing black boots, black jeans and a black shirt, on this day we are kept waiting for an hour while he dissects the video of Toulouse's preceding defeat to Montpellier which, as we know from Trevor Brennan's vivid recounting, will not have been an enjoyable experience for the players.
Indeed, through the medium of Brennan's life and times for five years working for Noves, we've been given an insight into this unique coaching figure and driving force behind the standard bearers of French rugby club rugby, especially in the Heineken Cup.
Six times under his command Stade Toulousain have reached the French Holy Grail of the Bouclier du Brennus, and three times the Heineken Cup.
Feverishly close to the action he may be on match day, he retains a necessary aloofness from the players while they're playing, though exudes more warmth when they have retired.
For example, he freely admitted to one journalist recently that he loved Brennan, who was like a son to him. This is not something he would have said while Trevor was playing.
Yannick Bru served under Noves for a decade as a player, but after almost a season as an assistant coach appears even more in awe of the man.
"It's very hard to speak about Guy in two minutes," begins Bru with a knowing smile.
"All the important decisions linked to the team, to the sponsors, to the players, to the contracts, the physical trainers, the physios; everything is decided with the agreement of Guy. He has such a big influence in French rugby, in the management of the team. I have never met somebody else who can take the best, in the deepest part of the body of the player, from the youngest, to the most famous players, he knows which word he has to employ. With Trevor Brennan, which word he has to use with Byron Kelleher, Fred Michalak, with Jean-Baptiste Elissalde. Immediately when he looks at you, he sees exactly which words he has to say to you. He's the most fascinating person I have ever met on this planet."
Growing more animated, Bru continues without prompting.
"He is always fighting. His life is a fight. Against the media, against the opponents, against the international team, against the French team some times when they pick too many from Stade Toulousain, his life is a perpetual fight. He lives for the competition.
"You play cards with Guy, you go fishing with Guy, you go running with Guy, you go cycling with Guy, everything is a competition for him. He puts fantastic pressure on you as a player, and on the staff when you work with him. But when you spend one season with Guy," he says, starting to chuckle, "you really enjoy your holidays."
By the time you are granted an interview with the man in person, you are almost intimidated. But he's not so frightening. Indeed, he generously puts his Irish interloper at ease by offering congratulations on Brennan's book.
"Un grand success," he says, smiling, and pats me on the back. Collaborating with Brennan opens doors in Stade Ernest Wallon's impressive complex, and also emphasises his affection for the Barnhall Bruiser, clearly Noves' type of honest, no-holds-barred player.
That Brennan never won so much as a solitary A cap in his five years with Europe's leading club, despite starting all four French semi-finals, both French finals and all 10 European Cup knock-out games Toulouse played in his first four years there still looks unjust, though maybe Noves was happy that his club was Brennan's entire outlet for his sense of grievance.
"Trevor is my friend. In terms of him not getting selected for Ireland, I know that he had a certain personality and style of play which our players needed. He had total engagement, the willingness to put his body on the line, the physicality of the game. He has a special spirit, a personality which enabled him to bring a certain atmosphere to the dressingroom and in terms of our team it was massively important to us. The Toulouse players needed him. Perhaps his style did not fit in so well with the Irish players and maybe they did not need what he brings to a team."
Noves is a one-club man, born and reared in Toulouse, who has played and coached with the club for 35 years, save for a two-year sabbatical when a promise to promote him from Espoirs to head coach was rescinded.
A sprinter of real quality in his youth, he had intended to leave his native city before coming across rugby a little fortuitously.
"I didn't set out to come to Stade Toulousain. I hadn't even heard of it. I watched two tournoi matches a year."
To gain a different experience and aspect on training, he only joined the club when he was 20.
"I discovered what I missed in athletics; giving to and getting from others all the time. I quit athletics for the amateurism of rugby, two training sessions a week, and the parties. The pleasure was both inside (the game) and outside."
A late developer, he worked methodically with his coaches to improve his game and reckons he was already "70 per cent" qualified for coaching by the time he retired, after which he has continually adapted to the game's changes.
As a winger, he broke into the French team in his early 20s, winning seven caps in 1978 and '79, before turning his back on l'equipe francais, seemingly for life, and then winning two Boucliers with Stade in 1985 and '86.
"Why my whole life at Toulouse? I was born here, I started my rugby career here. I have experienced every high and low with the team. We were relegated in '75/'76. I was there for my first final in 1980 and afterwards, I stayed very close to the players I played alongside, Jean-Claude Skrela in particular and so when they asked me to coach the A team I agreed. The A team were French champions that season.
"The club invited me join the coaching staff and we were again French champions straight away. At the time I was the assistant coach to Skrela and I could already feel the desire to coach. I have been here for all of it, the evolution from the amateur era to professionalism, I have seen these players develop and I still enjoy it."
Shivering ever so slightly in the shade of the main stand, he scarcely casts a glance to the session being run by his assistants on the pitch, which he explains is punishment for the defeat to Montpellier rather than the normal game of football they might play two days after a match.
Comparisons with Declan Kidney are manifold, but unlike Kidney it seems as if Noves is destined to forever remain a prophet in his own land. Not that, one suspects, it bothers him one baguette.
"I think I haven't been offered the French job because of politics," he says candidly.
"I'm not looking to be French coach and as long as nobody offers it to me, there isn't a lot of point in talking about it. I know I have always angered the establishment because I have spoken my mind. I was an international player but at the age of 22, after seven international caps I said I no longer wanted to play for the national side because the coaches were dishonest. I committed myself totally to Toulouse and never played for France again."
Clearly a highly principled man as well, the "dishonesty" was in the way they worked and their management of the team, but he counters: "I've calmed down a lot since my youth. I stay at Toulouse because I need trust. The people around me here are all people I have chosen. Every coach has played for the team. Philippe Rouge-Thomas was French champion with Toulouse and of course Yannick Bru won the Heineken Cup twice with us. Since they are both former Toulouse players, I know they are totally committed to the club.
"If I ever left Toulouse and went somewhere else, I would need to take all of these people with me in order to be able to work, so you can see it's impossible for me to leave," he reasons with a broad if mischievous smile - ie, memo to the FFR: take me, take my team.
However, it has to work both ways, and his longevity is a tribute to the club president, Rene Bouscatel, and the club's ethos.
"The reason I have managed to stay here so long is because Toulouse is a fantastic club and everything is based on continuity. When we go through a rough patch, like when we didn't get in to the quarter-finals of the Heineken Cup last year, or when we lost to Leinster in the quarter-finals the year before, the club has always taken a calm approach to the issues, looking for solutions to the problems rather than throwing everybody out and starting again from scratch.
"There are never any witch hunts and the president is always looking for solutions instead of people to blame. It makes an environment where people feel secure and able to try new things, without fear of reprisals if there are problems."
Like Munster, overseas' recruits tend not just to pass through, but to become part of the club's fabric, even for life. Stade Toulousain also have a clear sense of identity and a playing philosophy which, in their understandable grandness, they like to think sets them a little apart.
"It's very difficult to know what make Toulouse different from other clubs. Without knowing what Biarritz or Stade Francais do, but the big strength here is in the continuity and community. It's not a family in the literal sense for the local players who have their families around them, but I imagine that for some of these guys who have come from overseas or other parts of France, the club is their family. We as coaches all understand how they feel as we have all been there ourselves.
"We have a very strong culture and vision here which is passed from generation to generation. We evolve of course, but we also stay loyal to the roots I saw when I arrived in the late '70s. We are committed to total rugby, running backs with lots of movement. We like to play with physicality and movement and confidence, solidarity and produce a spectacle for our supporters and sponsors. Those ideas are as important to us today as they were back in the '80s."
They also differ mentally from other French teams who tend to have a more parochial attitude which, indeed, is more typically French. Right from the outset, Toulouse embraced the Heineken Cup, and hence have accounted for three of France's four victories to date. You wonder why this is so.
"Even before the Heineken Cup started, Toulouse used to invite teams over to play competitions from the Southern Hemisphere or from the rest of Europe.
"When the Heineken Cup was started, we very much wanted to do well. It's important to us to test ourselves against the best teams on a world stage.
"We were lucky enough to win the first final in Cardiff against Cardiff and at that point our sponsors started to want European recognition as well as recognition in France. We had been French champions with them so many times, they wanted to move on to the next level.
"As a club, we quickly developed a taste for European rugby and we have focused ourselves on it ever since. Our pre-season training is focused on being ready for the Heineken Cup and the Top 14 games which we play at the start of the season are just preparation for the European competition."
Anyone whoever wondered why the Top 14 produces the highest percentage of home wins of any frontline competition in the world need only take in a few games.
Not only is there the traditional French travail on their travels, but any referee who brandishes a yellow card to a home player or gives a penalty count in favour of the away team would be best advised to leave his car engine running. Spoiling at the tackle/breakdown area is also tolerated a good deal more.
Echoing a theme also taken up by Bru, Noves explains: "We have been able to qualify for the knockout stages so many times in part because we are able to take advantage of the quality of the referees. The referees in Britain and Ireland are better than in France, much more strict and that means a lot less cheating and slowing the ball down. The clean, fast games enable us to play the rugby we are good at and we can really show what we are capable of far more than in a French game where things are often messy."
Yet despite again already reaching the semi-finals for a 15th year under Noves with four rounds to go domestically, the cherished Bouclier has eluded them since 2001, and to a degree Toulouse have suffered for the fixture congestion which has arisen from their regular participation in the latter stages of both competitions.
"It's tough, playing on both stages at the same time," he agrees, nodding his head vigorously.
"The problem in the past is that we have won the Heineken Cup, been on a total high and then had to focus ourselves the following week to play a semi-final of the Top 14 and we just can't.
"The players are all exhausted and it's too much to mentally prepare for two games like that. This year it may be easier as we have three weeks of Top 14 between the Heineken Cup final and the Top 14 semi-finals, games we don't need to win which will enable us to rest and refocus."
So perhaps then, the first leg of an historic double, to emulate the one achieved by Toulouse in 1996, and which only Leicester have subsequently emulated. After back-boning France's anti-climactic Coupe du Monde, when the craven loss of French flair clearly irked him, that would be a monumental achievement.
In keeping with his almost utopian philosophy of how trophies should indeed be won with a certain élan, Noves has no regrets about the way Toulouse performed in their one losing final, to Wasps at Twickenham four years ago, and says he wants the best team to win today.
"Munster certainly deserve to be in the final and I think we do too. Both teams came out of the two toughest pools and at the beginning of the season we were all complaining about the pools, Munster with Clermont, Llanelli and Wasps and us with Leinster, Leicester and Edinburgh, but here we are in the final.
"Munster have beaten two English teams away and you have to respect that. Obviously I'm expecting a very physical game from them and I know they have a week of rest before the final, something we don't have the luxury of so maybe they will be a little fresher. I'd have to say that Munster are the favourites for the game having been European champions more recently than us," he reaffirms, deadpan. Yeah right Guy.
The fire still rages within, even if on this day he had seemed a little subdued. You mention his nouveau velo, donated to him by the French Cycling Team, in light of his much-publicised crash two days before the quarter-final against Cardiff, which had led to him being airlifted unconscious to hospital, only for him to check himself out the night before the match.
No, he has not taken it out for a spin yet. "A near death experience," he recalls, looking you straight in the eye. And, like everything he says to you, you don't doubt him for a second. Except for the favouritism line.
Guy Noves factfile
Age:53.
Position: wing.
Playing career: Toulouse - 2 French Championships (1985 and '86). France - 7 caps (1977-79).
As coach of Toulouse(1993- ). 6 Championships (1994, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2001). 3 Heineken Cups (1996, 2003, 2005)
*Making him the most decorated club coach in European rugby.
