Express coach firing on all cylinders

European Cup Final Countdown: Patrice Lagisquet is in his element facing Munster, a team he greatly admires, he tells Gerry Thornley

Observing Patrice Lagisquet in the front of the press box during his team's facile win over Montpellier last Friday evening made you wonder again why anyone would become a coach.

Sitting alongside the equally voluble Serge Blanco, and perhaps playing to the gallery a little, the Biarritz coach was full of Gallic shrugs and gesticulations, waving his arms wildly and criticising the referee while imploring a yellow card for a Montpellier player.

Having procured a bonus point in the first 26 minutes, his side were under little threat of injuries and were leading 50-7 with about 10 minutes to go.

Afterwards, he is altogether calmer and grants an interview in English with typical French politesse. Playing Montpellier was better than training against opposition, to maintain the team's rhythm, he said. At the same time he acknowledged there would be scant comparison with "the fight" Munster would bring to Cardiff.

"We don't forget that it was very, very difficult to beat them in last year's quarter-finals. We know that they can play with a very good strategy, but they can also play with their backs. Most of the time people speak about their forwards, who are very, very good, but their backs are able also to create good things.

"Some of their players may not be very well known in Europe but I think players like Kelly, Horgan, Halstead and Payne are very good players. Maybe not as brilliant as O'Driscoll and D'Arcy, but everything they do is very well done and sometimes they can create very good things."

In stark contrast to the daily medical bulletins from Limerick and Cork, the French champions - in relatively rude health, and atop the French Top 14 - moved serenely on to Cardiff yesterday, no less, after a two-day training camp near Dax. Such rare end-of-season contentment invites merely a shrug of the shoulders from Lagisquet.

"Yes, but it's our job to be in very good condition. We have two physical-preparation coaches - one is working with the club for nine years - and we know each other very well.

"This French season is so long, we have 10 months' competition, but we know how to manage the fitness of the players and I hope we will be able to be as physical as Munster because it is a very important part of the result."

Oh dear, that sounds like an ominous endorsement of the prevailing opinion that we are in for some trench warfare on Saturday, with the ball at times an optional extra. But criticisms of Biarritz's conservative route to victory in the knockout stages against Sale and Bath ignore the circumstances of those games, and Lagisquet's comments when this is put to him suggest they might also be misplaced come Saturday.

"I don't really agree with this criticism. Against Sale we hadn't played enough," he begins, in reference to the two-month interlude for the Six Nations.

"We didn't have intensity, but against Bath that was not really the same, because during the first 20 minutes we played well but did not score a try. And after 10 minutes it was very wet and with these weather conditions what was important for us was to be realistic, to adapt well to the conditions, to keep very disciplined, not too nervous, and then take the scores. And we did it well.

"We don't care about these criticisms because we know we are able to do different things, and for us what is important is to know what we can do. The British press is not managing this team," he points out with an engaging smile.

Munster, after all, rolled up their sleeves in similar fashion after the Six Nations hiatus to put Perpignan away. Indeed, ask Lagisquet about the Basque/Biarritz rugby culture, and the Bayonne Express (he used to play for Biarritz's neighbours and bitter rivals) quickly draws comparisons with Saturday's opponents.

"The identity is to have a very strong pack, a very strong scrum, a bit like Munster. I think that our culture of rugby is sometimes a bit the same.

"We also have backs like Serge Blanco who are geniuses of the game, and we try sometimes to find that, but maybe today our team with the backs is a little bit more like Munster than Toulouse or Leinster."

"We try to organise things very well, to be very clever in the way we play, even with the backs. Maybe we don't take as much risks as Toulouse or Leinster, but we are a bit like Munster, we don't like to give too many occasions to the opposite team," he adds with a chuckle.

He keenly anticipates Saturday's sense of occasion, recalling the memorable atmosphere created by the "fantastic" Munster supporters in the quarter-finals of 2001 in Thomond Park and last year in Estadio Anoeta.

"There was so much respect between the two teams and supporters. That's why I think it's really a great event to play in the Millennium Stadium with maybe 60,000 Munster supporters, because I know that they really support their team but they also respect the opposite team."

The pride in taking Biarritz to their first final is palpable.

"It means a lot because we came back to the first division in 1996 after one season in the second division, and then Serge Blanco became the president, and he gave the club a new spirit, and now everybody who comes into this club is really involved in trying to win titles.

"We always want to keep progressing all the time, to feel that even though Biarritz is a small city, we can win the Heineken Cup. For us it means we can keep getting results at the top level."