RUGBY:Leinster's outhalf tells JOHNNY WATTERSONhow the fundamental philosophy of the squad helped them dramatically rescue a seemingly lost cause

DON’T SET goals. Set values. And there Joe Schmidt and Jonathan Sexton dared to raise rugby to something more than tactics and running. They were on steady ground. Sexton knows there is no manual yet published that can coach a team out of the bottom of a chasm. There are no tactics that breathe life into a corpse. There is no set play that leaves aside all logic for the concept of believing.

Leinster had fallen. For 40 minutes they were emasculated, punished and all but out of a Heineken Cup final that they had so desperately sought and perhaps expected. From that ugly opening half, the only faces they had to look at during the break were their own. As so, as often happens with great teams, that is where they found their answers.

Under the groaning beams and roof of the Millennium Stadium, there had never been such disillusionment and pervasive concern that everything Leinster had worked for and built was crashing down around them.

Beating Leicester, defeating Toulouse, they had moved two mountains and now in their final hour of need they were deserting the formula that had toppled great Europeans.

“Don’t set goals, set values,” says Sexton echoing the words of his coach. You play the game with the right mind and it will not hurt you. You can never fail. And there it was. No one could explain it, or, even really understand it. Sexton had grasped the moment with the team at half-time and had spoken up. He struck a cord, asked them to question themselves and look beyond the remnants of a ragged first half.

“I think 16 points seems like a lot, sounds like a lot. It is a lot,” he says. “But if we got the next score and played in their half then they’d be in the difficult position. Then we got another score. It put a screw in their head. Then we had all the momentum That’s what we said at half-time. If we could get the other score we could really rattle them. We were able to do that.”

Sexton spoke of Liverpool coming back from 3-0 down in the 2005 Champions League final. But you felt he believed the intimacy of his thoughts belonged with the team in the locker room rather on the airwaves or in print. Then, with the words still burning the ears of the players, he was going over for a try. Then over again.

“The try first Eoin (Reddan) just threw me a lovely pass,” he explained. “I just drifted with it to . . .(Soane) Tonga’uiha I think. If I didn’t get on the outside of him I would have gotten some slagging off the lads. The next one Jamie (Heaslip) blocked someone really well, probably off the ball just to let me get clear from five yards out.”

In between Sexton kicked the points, converted his own tries. Hollywood moguls would have shredded such a script for such a drastic departure from reality. His own instincts are to shy away from the “heroic figure” role people are conferring on him. To bask in personal glory, even after a final tattooed with his name, seems to forsake the essence of team commitment, the one he spoke of, that brought him a second winners’ medal here.

“I’ll treasure every moment of it,” he says. “We believed all year. We were in such a tough pool and even against tough teams we were able to score unanswered points. Yeah, we talked about that again at half-time, that we can score unanswered and we can build on that. Then when you get a score, go after them again. I suppose it just went to plan.”

“It was a strange old game,” he adds. “Strange for them. They came out in the first half and smashed us and we were shell- shocked. I suppose we led to our own downfall. Every time we made a line break, and we made a few of them even in the first half, we just turned the ball over.

“I remember Brian (O’Driscoll) racing for the line with (Ben) Foden and if he’d held we might have scored off the next phase. But he off-loaded. The same with the next move. Happened a few times. We tried to force it at times. I suppose that’s the thing.”

Don’t set goals. Set values.

“Joe (Schmidt) said if you can win a game like this from behind you will be remembered,” says Sexton moving towards the mythical. Teams grow with time.

He spoke of how a few weeks ago Munster drew on their own brand of self-belief and beat up Leinster in the second half from two scores down. Leinster conceded a try. Momentum shifted. Munster saw something, smelled weakness, sensed anxiety and that was all they needed to tear at them, draw blood. Sexton knows how edifices can turn to dust. It is, he says, sport. Sport can serve up the unthinkable.

“It’s pretty difficult to get here,” he adds. “Maybe you take it for granted. You know you’ve won it, got to the semis and you think you’ll be here every year. It doesn’t work like that. If you want to be one of the great teams and we are up there now having won it twice. But you want to push on to another level, get to the semi-finals, finals year in year out like all those great teams have done. Toulouse, Munster, Leicester all these teams down the years. With the age profile of the squad hopefully it’s possible. Hopefully all of us will stay grounded and do that.”

He leaves eating a sandwich like a school prefect at break time, his tie loose, his ordinariness making him, tonight, somehow all the more extraordinary.