GUY NOVES INTERVIEW: Gerry Thornleymeets the fabled coach, now in his 16th season with Toulouse, and supposedly way past his sell-by date, and asks how does he do it
PRIOR TO last season's final with Munster, the Toulouse coach Guy Noves had just been presented with a €7,000 racing bike by the French Olympic cycling team, but not even the indestructible Toulouse coach had dared to adhere to the maxim of getting straight back on-to his bike.
Half a year on and Noves's view of his much publicised head-on crash with a car has not changed. "I should have died," he maintains while recounting those moments.
"A Mercedes crashed into me and I threw myself on top of the Mercedes. Then I was airlifted by helicopter to hospital."
Famously, of course, he discharged himself within 48 hours so he could be pitchside for Toulouse's Heineken Cup quarter-final win over Cardiff.
His survival instincts having saved his life, Noves is now back cycling again.
"Yes, I'm back on the bicycle. It's the bike that won the Tour de France," he says proudly.
"When the weather allows, it is important for me to cycle. It is important for the sanity."
Ah yes, Noves's sanity. When talking about the intense and passionate head coach of Toulouse in the build-up to that Munster match, his assistant Yannick Bru had quipped that, unique human that Noves is, "at the end of the season you need a holiday from Guy." And, one ventures, never more so than at the end of last season.
Like any natural-born winner, he detests losing and rarely does, and to put Munster's achievement in beating Toulouse into further perspective, that was only the fourth of 17 finals Noves has lost with Toulouse; winning 10 of 14 as a coach.
Six months on it would appear the pain of that 16-13 defeat in the Millennium Stadium has subsided, even if it still rankles.
"There was not much to that match really; that's what I learned. Toulouse could have won that match. We didn't succeed really at very important points in the match. The missed kick by Jean-Baptiste Elissalde. A pass that was a bit too forward.
"Fabien Pelous got the yellow card as well, as you know, and that was at a very important point in the match. And let's not talk about the referee," he says, with a smile. "The last 15 minutes were crazy."
As much as the manifold images of Munster celebrations, another abiding memory was of the Toulouse players and management mixing with thousands of the Red Army in the mayhem that was Cardiff airport, and waiting quietly and disconsolately in the departure lounge for an additional couple of hours before their flight home.
Noves says his job was "to give another two weeks to my players and get them back on track and to give them more energy for the French Championship".
Previous runs to the Heineken Cup final in 2002, 2003 and 2004 had unhinged their performances in the French Championship play-offs, but, because of the World Cup, last season the play-offs had been put back. Helpfully too, Toulouse had built up quite a buffer to ensure a top-four finish.
"So then I decided the espoirs (academy team) actually went to a match against Perpignan and the professionals were able to work as normal for the next two weeks. It is the coach's experience, of course, to make sure the players want to show they have something to prove in the championship.
"Unlike other years, when we had a final in the Coupe d'Europe and then went straight into the play-offs in the French Championship, we had time to recuperate and to work, to revitalise the players physically and technically."
At the end of a World Cup year which had been as big a drain on Toulouse as any squad in the world, against all expectations they overcame Montferrand in the final on June 28th, Toulouse's 37th competitive match of a World Cup year.
In the circumstances, you wonder if perhaps it was the best of Toulouse's 17 boucliers.
"Perhaps. I have won 10, but yes, it was a beautiful bouclier for me. I get goosepimples when I think or talk about it," and, chuckling, as if to prove the point, he clasps his arms as if to control an imaginary shiver.
"It would not have been a beautiful season after losing the final of the European Cup. After winning the semi-final against London Irish and then losing the final by only three points it was very hard. But the public were magnificent and coming through to the semi-finals was also very difficult. That semi-final against Paris was a very good match as well.
"So everything was there; all the ingredients were there to be in the best condition possible.
"But the only ones who didn't know that were the media and Montferrand. The media, of course, supported Montferrand because they had never won the title. Toulouse were presented as the privileged team that had already won 16 titles.
"It was to be Montferrand's year. During the championship, Montferrand had won in Toulouse, they had beaten Toulouse in the semi-finals the year before, and then perhaps before they actually started playing the final their players thought they had already won the match. And so that is what I said to the media. I continued to poison the Montferrand team if I could," he recalls with a mischievous glint.
It was a magnificent, remarkably full-on, pre-ELVs final - IRB, John O'Neill et al, please take note - given so many tired and battered players were almost playing on memory. Jean-Baptiste Elissalde appeared to battle through for 70 minutes with a broken rib, while inside him, Byron Kelleher gave a virtuoso, man-of-the-match performance to cap his French player-of-the-year award.
Nearing the hour mark, with Toulouse leading 13-10, they had a scrum inside their 22 that back-pedalled, the ball shooting out behind a pressurised Kelleher. Centre Maleli Kunavore scooped the ball up on the run and broke up the blind side; a sequences of further charges and one-handed offloads by Finau Maka, Jean Bouilhou, Kelleher, Elissalde and the Puma workhorse Patricio Albacete ensued.
From the one recycle in this sweeping, 80-metre move, Elissalde dropped into the pocket to take Kelleher's pass as if to go for a drop goal from about 45 metres out.
Instead, with a trademark step to his right, he created the space for Yannick Jauzion to move the ball on to winger Yves Donguy via Maxime Medard. Stepping inside, the winger drew two men before flipping a left-handed offload out to Medard, the fullback then stepping back inside two tackles and skipping a despairing attempted trip to round the posts.
A try fit to grace or win any final, it was very Toulousain.
"Yes, I think so," says Noves.
"Perhaps. But for me, before these new ELVs and the changes, not playing is not to take risks. If you score a try from your own 22-metre line, that is what I like. I think the defence is not going to be really looking for us if we are that far away. The position of the players was really good for us to go for it, and in those circumstances we shouldn't hesitate."
On the day of this interview, Noves is in the rarefied and unusually sun-kissed surrounds of Druids Glen golf club at a pre-tournament seminar organised by the ERC for coaches and referees to discuss the ELVs. Noves welcomes such meetings, though prefers to reserve judgment on the new regulations.
"At the moment I would say I do not like them. The referees should be refereeing the old rules with a lot of rigour and then we wouldn't have to create new regulations," he says, echoing the views of Warren Gatland and countless other coaches in the Northern Hemisphere.
"Even more so now, because they are concentrating on the ELVs and not on the old rules, the old rules are not being respected. It's a very difficult area."
Because of clubs such as Bourgoin, who usually take a fairly lax attitude to the H Cup compared to the French Championship - primarily because of resources - and last season Clermont, there has been much debate over French clubs' true interest in the European showpiece. Just to set the record straight, Noves expresses no preference for winning either competition: "I've never had any priority. Never. We try to go as far as possible in the two competitions."
But you wonder if the unhappy memories of last year's final have left Toulouse hungrier than ever to win a fourth H Cup. "No, no, no. I've won some finals and I've lost some finals. My desire is always to be the best in the match that has to be played the next weekend."
Last season, Toulouse hit the ground running by winning their first seven championship matches, but this season they began with defeats away to Montpellier and Clermont either side of a scrappy home win over Dax and victory at home to Biarritz. It has led to a view that Toulouse are perhaps not the force of last season. In light of three successive wins over Montauban, Perpignan and Castres and a move to second in the table, it is a potentially dangerous misconception.
Noves points out that because their season went on longer than anyone's, bar Clermont's, and was even more intense because of their Heineken Cup run, they were the latest into pre-season.
"Two things, therefore: we started back really late and then we had to adapt to the new regulations. This prevented us from immediately reaching a very high level. But every week, the team is getting better. And then the fixtures we got at the start of this season were also a lot more difficult than last season. Last season we sent some B teams to matches, because we were well positioned on the championship, and the media complained. So the big matches are now, from the beginning."
To illustrate his point, he reminds you that after those opening matches against Montpellier and Dax, Toulouse were obliged to play their six fellow Cup qualifiers in six successive weeks.
"So all the big, big matches are at the very beginning of the championship."
Noves maintains he is a humble person, and in keeping with that he envisages seven or eight teams could wrest the bouclier away from Toulouse this season, but he won't propose a list of potential winners in the minefield that is the Coupe d'Europe.
"The objectives for this season are the same as always, to qualify from the pool stages. Never mind thinking about who is the big team in the Heineken Cup, we need to qualify from the pool this year. We have Bath, Newport and Glasgow. It is never easy against Bath, and provinces like Newport and Glasgow change every year.
"We never know what to expect; it is always very difficult. We respect them very much before thinking of what's going to happen next."
As for the prospect of this latest Heineken Cup, "I love it, I really do," he enthuses.
"For the well-being of rugby in general, there are too many matches for players. Perhaps we will have to go from 14 clubs to 12 clubs in France very quickly and perhaps to increase our prospects of winning more games in the Heineken Cup, we need a six-week break in the middle of the season so that these professional players can actually prepare and work properly."
With a paternal instinct towards his players, this takes him to his main bugbear about modern-day rugby.
"I think because today the federations work on their own, and the clubs work on their own, there is no unity between the two. We need to find that link between the two again. It's hard to think that an international player at Toulouse only had three weeks to prepare for the first game in the championship although we think that, ideally, they should have three months. We had three weeks," he repeats, despairingly.
This was Noves's 16th pre-season as Toulouse head coach. Perceived wisdom has it a coach's sell-by date with one team is usually five or six years, perhaps less, rarely if ever more. Noves is unique. How does he do it?
"Look at me," he says, laughing, as if to suggest he is ageless, before providing a clue to his longevity.
"I respect my players, the colleagues that I work with. I also share the good moments and the other moments, and we have a lot to learn from others as well."
But he and Toulouse remain the benchmark.
Guy Noves factfile
Age:53
Playing career:(position, wing) Toulouse - 3 French Championnats (1985, '86 and '89). France - 7 caps (1977-79).
Coaching CV:*Toulouse (1993 to date)- 7 French Championnats (1994, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2001, '08); 2 losing finals, 15 semi-finals in a row.
3 Heineken Cups (1996, 2003, 2005); 2 runners-up (2004, 2008).
*Making him the most decorated coach in European rugby.
