What's meant won't pass you by. Listening to Matt Williams recount the bones of his life story, observing how he has helped a gifted young Leinster team to its first final of any hue this afternoon, one can't help but wonder how much his life seemed almost pointed toward this. It's as if destiny has called him here.

As a coach - and as is often the case - Williams seems to be more a prophet here than in his native land. When he says he couldn't be happier you believe him. And besides, if coaching this Leinster team doesn't do it for you, well then you probably shouldn't be coaching.

He has roots Charlie Haughey would have been proud to boast of. His family on all four sides are Irish. One grandparent hailed form Nenagh ("she was a Maher"), another from Donegal ("he was a Williams"), another from Limerick, whose father (John Dwyer Ryan), legend had it, played with Shannon, though this has never been proven. Then there was his mother's mother, who came from Wicklow.

"All her family came out to Australia in 1916, during the uprising. We don't know why, but basically they never came back except for short periods, and during one of those short periods my mother was born here. I'm an Irish citizen, I'm very proud of that, and it's been wonderful discovering that, which is probably hard for a native to understand - that you can regard yourself as Australian and Irish. As I often say to people, an Irish wolfhound born in Australia is still an Irish wolfhound."

Reared in the western suburbs of Sydney, Matt and his three brothers all went to St Patrick's, Strathfield. His late father, Ted, was an unqualified mechanical engineer and, along with their mum Dawn Ryan, strove to ensure their kids had a good education, insisting all four went to college.

"I never wanted for anything. It was a great upbringing. I sort of don't know where to put it. It was a typical migrant upbringing, I suppose. My dad worked hard in a factory and my grandfather worked hard in a factory through the wars."

At 15, Williams told his father he wanted to leave school and do an apprenticeship. "He never told me what to do, but that day he just said: 'you're going to school on Monday'."

Similarly, he told and informed his lecturer, also a rugby mate, that he was leaving college after a year, but he in turn informed Williams' dad. War erupted in the Williams household that night, and despite being 20, he was told he was staying at college until he obtained a degree (in education). He laughs at the memory but admits: "It was the best thing I ever did."

He taught PE and English while playing club rugby with Eastwood, where his dad, uncle and three brothers all played. "I was never a great player," he concedes, having wrongly opted to play outhalf. "I should have played scrumhalf. I always regret that.

"I didn't want play scrumhalf because dad did it. I was stupid. I couldn't do what all the great outhalves did, and work in a very small space."

His dedication and eagerness to learn, coupled with a lack of technical coaching, was what actually prompted him to become a coach. Employed by the New South Wales union ostensibly in an administrative capacity, he gradually began working with elite coaches, such as Dave Clark, and eventually Bob Dwyer and Alec Evans. He cut his teeth as a 30-year-old coach with Eastwood, tagged along with John Connolly to the Emerging Wallabies - "a massive turning point for me" - in 1994 and worked with Dwyer in World Cup camps in '95.

"I became very technical because of those guys. I saw the need to coach people on a very technical basis, so I always seek out coaches who are strong, technical people like Willie (Anderson), Roly (Meates) and Al (Gaffney)," whom he describes as more a co-coach than an assistant.

He learned an awful lot regarding video analysis and defence through rugby league. He's an avid learner, willing to explore new concepts in the game, and is equally willing to employ additional expertise. A bright fellow with plenty of outside interests, he is blessed with the gift of the gab and is an exceptional and infectious talker about the game. The man has soul, and he brings a palpable passion to the sport that clearly enthrals him as much as ever.

Williams is still proud to say he is New South Wales' longest-serving coach in 125 years, having overseen more than 50 matches in the 1997-'99 period, though he admits it had turned sour by the end.

"They really didn't want to change. They had an organisation which went bankrupt last year and that was the best thing that could have happened it, because now they can change."

Williams took some sharp criticism from the Sydney Morning Herald to boot, but he says of the whole experience: "If it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger. It puts life in perspective." The latter was hammered home when his brother Kim died of cancer. Williams resigned with a year of his contract remaining and travelled to the 1999 World Cup with school-friends he hadn't been abroad with in over 20 years. A chance meeting with Mike Ruddock, a former team-mate from a two-year stint at Swansea in the mid-'80s, led to an offer to come aboard at Leinster. He rang his wife Chrissie to tell her of an option to coach and live in Ireland for a few months. "When are you going to grow up?" she responded. Not for a while yet, he hopes. Ask him why he puts up with the grief, the lack of job security, and he says: "I don't have a choice. It's just in me. It's the only thing I could do that's not work."

Despite what he saw as a lot of flaws in the back-up structures, what excited him most about Leinster was the potential. "John Hussey, the chairman, has been first-rate. Basically he said that if I stayed within budget, I could have it. They weren't going to be selectors. They acted like a board and set policies. Through those losing games last season they were rock solid. They knew where and why we were losing those games."

The way Williams describes it, Leinster had a few players and a few balls at the outset of last season, and that was about it. "Credit to the board of management, the staff, and the players, they took a leap of faith," he says.

In retrospect, the European Cup defeat to Biarritz may have been the best thing that happened to the team. "If we had made last year's quarter-finals, we would never have reached our potential, because we had to have that bleeding and that pain. That was cathartic. That was what made us change."

A blessing in disguise was the break enforced by the foot-and-mouth lay-off, which gave Leinster time off to work in the gym and on skills. The proof is in the ritualistic Wednesday team announcements; Leinster are at full-strength and unchanged for the third game running.

This is but one of many ways up the mountain, he stresses, and Williams admits it couldn't be done without the work of Leinster manager Ken Ging, Gaffney, Anderson, Meates, the rest of the back-up team, Hussey and the Leinster Branch, and the players. It's seeing them rewarded, it's seeing his "second" team beating Swansea, which gives him as much satisfaction as anything.

Besides, he finds the notion of minor fame being bestowed on someone who walks around most days in a tracksuit as faintly ridiculous. His last year in NSW taught him not to take it all too seriously. "I'm looking forward to this final but, heh, if we lose we still have our families. It's not life or death. The sun will come up Monday."

He regrets not seeming more of his mum, who is not inclined to travel over from Sydney, and he will probably return to Oz one day. But he has no plans beyond the end of his current contract in June.

"The organisation treats me brilliantly and I'm enormously happy. The integrity with which I've been treated has been first-class. Much better than it was at home." Add the pool of players at Leinster, and he concedes that set-ups like this don't come along too often.

There's a neat symmetry to it all really. Forty years on he's back living in the country and even the county where his mother hails from, coaching a talented crop of eager tyros along with like-minded coaches.

Where would he be going just yet?