LEINSTER. EUROPEAN champions. Saturday, May 24th, at Murrayfield just capped it off. The last piece of an unbelievable year-and-a-half in which Irish rugby retained the Heineken Cup, retained the Magners League and made off with the Grand Slam. And now, last but by no means least, the nearly men are no more.

Hugely deserved, and won the hard way too. The heroic defiance in Harlequins, the clinical dissection of the reigning European champions and then the gritty comeback against the English standard-bearers brooks no argument and counts as a huge character endorsement.

As with the other stupendous Irish days, it came down to tiny margins, and there were a myriad of factors to the win. Leinster enjoyed a three-to-one ratio in travelling support, perhaps helped by neutrals joining their cause, but the final count for the Blue Army may have been 40,000. It mattered hugely, as Brian O’Driscoll stressed, and he thanked the marketing team for getting all those blue flags into the ground.

It was an unstinting effort from first minute to last across the board. It had to be.

Leinster slipped off defensively and conceded 13 points while Stan Wright was yellow carded either side of half-time, but they realigned their “up and out” defensive system, and worked harder to have fewer tight forwards in the belly of their defence.

Taking five early Leicester throws hadn’t been scripted, but the counter-rucking and turnovers at the breakdown is a new string to Leinster’s bow, and the ball wrestled away by Chris Whitaker and Wright was the catalyst for the eight-phase attack which led to the winning penalty.

The scrum was immense too; Wright paid his dues and Cian Healy came of age.

So too, of course, did Jonathan Sexton. On a career-defining day his was a career-defining performance. While he couldn’t sleep for two nights before the game, he still brought an infectious self-confidence to the game.

“Our belief,” Malcolm O’Kelly cited as the winning factor, before revealing: “Jonny Sexton said to me, and it stuck in my head throughout the match, ‘There was nothing we can do about it, we are actually going to win this match. It’s written’.

“That unerring belief certainly helped him kick that drop goal. Every kick I was thinking, ‘I wonder what he’s thinking now or how he’s going to kick this over?’, but it was out of his hands almost because he knew it was going to go over, that we were going to win the game.”

Along with the savvy and leadership of Leo Cullen and Shane Jennings, in their time of need Jamie Heaslip came up with another massive second half and a killer try.

Then there was Rocky Elsom and Brian O’Driscoll. Elsom seemed like one of those over-age ringers in a schools match, rumbling through Alesana Tuilagi to draw the initial line in the sand, stealing lineouts, putting in monster tackles and galloping and slaloming through all-comers.

“Let’s put it this way, we wouldn’t have won the Heineken Cup without Rocky Elsom,” said O’Driscoll with a huge grin and deliberately massive understatement. “The guy – as Will Greenwood rightly put it during the week – irrespective of what happened today, Rocky Elsom was the player of the Heineken Cup before the final. You saw the display he put in today.

“He’s a remarkable player, I’d say he’s probably the best player I’ve ever played with and I’ve played with some very good players. He doesn’t make that many errors, he has a massive work-rate and his ball-carrying is frightening.”

Coach Michael Cheika expressed guarded optimism Elsom might stay another season, although arguably there’s now less reason for him to hang around. It won’t be a question of money.

Other things might keep him here though. Asked if his name had ever been serenaded quite like that at home, Elsom sheepishly admitted: “No, it hasn’t.”

Long after the trophy celebration and the lap of honour, the blue hordes were still chanting his name and, for the last time, that of a suited Felipe Contepomi as he was lifted shoulder-high by Stephen Keogh to hold the trophy aloft.

The players’ decision to have Chris Whitaker lift the trophy with Leo Cullen was a mark of their respect for him and what he has contributed over three years.

“I tried to avoid it,” Whitaker admitted. “I tried to go up there earlier. I said, ‘mate stop, it’s not my day, there’s guys here who are here a lot longer than I am’. I was really upset, I don’t think I really warranted it.”

That said, it showed they cared though? “Aw yeah, it means a lot to me that they would even think about doing that.”

Whitaker maintained his elation was not tinged with sadness at this being his last game, although it must have been.

As for O’Kelly, when asked if he was considering bowing out, he smiled and said: “Are you kidding lads? There’s a recession on.”

Later, Bernard Jackman brought the cup back to Kielys in Donnybrook. While the only sadness on the day was that Denis Hickie and co missed out, among those to kiss the cup was Chris Pim, as defiantly tough, hard and uncompromising a player as any the province has produced. Saturday was a heritage thing too.

Leinster may have silenced their detractors for now, and by rights once and for all. But while acknowledging that, there’s no doubt an element of bitterness remains, as O’Driscoll admitted.

“Yeah, we have. We haven’t forgotten the things that were said about us in December by certain quarters of the media. I could list off a name, a number of names, but I’m not going to do so. You don’t forget that. We’ve gone and proved those people particularly wrong. There were some very distasteful things said.

“But today it’s sweet, we’ll enjoy it amongst ourselves, just ourselves. The real diehard support, we know who they are and we’ll enjoy this victory with them because they have been there through the thick and thin.

“There’ll be a few people jumping on the bandwagon, as there always are; they can enjoy the ride as well, but the diehards are the ones we really respect and cherish.”