THERE WAS a lot going on after that final whistle. Shane Horgan and Brian O’Driscoll hugged for as long as it was decent. Cian Healy thrust his arms in the air and screamed up into the stands, looking every bit the Olympic weightlifter that had just clean- jerked two family saloons for gold.

Devin Toner ripped off his high -viz bib and launched himself at the party in the centre of Murrayfield as Leo Cullen and Rocky Elsom clasped each other for support like two warring heavyweights who had just gone 12 rounds with each other.

Jamie Heaslip had annexed a blue flag and it was draped from his shoulders and O’Driscoll then propelled half of his body into the stand and plucked out a little girl, who didn’t seem to mind at all.

On the track that runs around the perimeter, Gordon D’Arcy wore a beatific smile. The epiphany was unfolding all around him. His boots and socks had been cast aside as he walked barefoot along the track at the side of the pitch grinning like some mystic holy man renouncing his worldly goods but who understood how these moments should be met. None of the senses would be left out of the appreciation, not even his feet feeling the ground beneath him.

For D’Arcy a decade has rolled over quicker than he might have ever thought and all along the Heineken Cup was madly ringing in his ears like tinnitus. Europe was out there as a benchmark for Leinster success, always out there and always out of reach. But it took more than training ground moves and an international cast to stop the background noise. It took belief.

“Belief is a thing you look back on and say ‘oh yeah we had belief there,’” he says. “But I think that belief is like a ripple. You see players believing and you see them on the pitch and they start leading. Then other guys in the squad then start buying into that. It’s a gradual thing, Then, suddenly you have a squad of 30 people who just go ‘well why can’t we win the Heineken Cup?’

“From January there was a real sense of ‘we can win this’. We’d got four or five games left and it was a knockout from here so it was win every game.

“The ’Quins game was more important than the semi-final (Munster) because that was literally like, who’s bigger? Let’s find it out and we came out on top. And for me that was the most satisfying. Away from home and against a team we didn’t really know that much about . . . we knew we were going to have to grind it out and we did.”

For D’Arcy and the team it has been a sinuous route as much as an uphill journey. Captain Leo Cullen had said that when he left Dublin for Welford Road, he had turned his back on some disarray in Donnybrook. Around the same time O’Driscoll had flirted with leaving for a more pampered life in the South of France. Coach Michael Cheika has achieved some important work in clarifying what was needed and putting some order and direction into a group of talented players.

“Well I think what Cheika did was take the seeds that were growing in Leinster. . . ,” says D’Arcy. “I think the players had started to take a bit of ownership but we just needed direction. That’s what he has brought and he’s developed a culture that the players were starting.

“Now we have this team ethic, a team that wins, a team that fights tooth and nail for stuff . . . it’s hard to quantify what they have but whatever that little thing is in the dressing-room we seem to have it now. Every coach will tell you you can’t force it. When it’s there you just go with it and when it’s not there you just do your best to try and bring it back.

“There’s no set formula for something like that. The big thing is that it took Leinster longer to learn from our mistakes. The culture had been here for three or four years. We’ve been tough. We’ve had 30 odd games and there’s just been that one game or one and a half games where we just haven’t played smart or we just imploded or went back on ourselves.

“So, just that little bit had to change. You cannot put an exact formula about how long it’s going to take. It took us this long so it’s just enjoying it while it’s here.”

For a player who has kept a patient silence when injury threatened to terminate a glorious career, D’Arcy’s uncomplaining dignity was a feature of his return from a shattered arm. He understands the importance of not allowing those lost days fester or corrupt his thinking.

“Injury’s done and dusted,” he quips with an air of finality. “It’s tough to know (how I feel),” he says. “There are a lot of emotions going on. At this exact moment I feel that it’s more my family that are enjoying it. I need a couple of days to get to dissect it and sit down and realise I’ve a winner’s medal in my bag and I was walking around with the trophy. But it hasn’t sunk in that we won. Tomorrow I’ll be waking up saying ‘oh my god’ I’m a Heineken Cup winner’.”

A winner at last. Now Leinster can move onwards and upwards.