Gerry Thornleyinterviews the coach who has helped Clermont Auvergne establish themselves as one of the best clubs in French rugby

LAST WEDNESDAY the weather was so bad in the Auvergne that Vern Cotter was obliged to move his players' training session indoors. One of the many urban myths surrounding Cotter's teak- tough Kiwi image is that he makes his players train in their shorts, as he does himself, regardless of the weather.

"Don't believe everything you hear," he says.

Indeed, that's invariably the impression one comes to when meeting Cotter. He is polite, relatively soft-spoken and thoughtful. He's a Gallic Kiwi by now, having spent 10 years there as a player and coach, before returning there for the last three seasons after a nine-year stint coaching in New Zealand. Cotter was a big, strong number eight with Bay of Plenty at age-grade level all the way up before a three-year stint with Counties when Andy Dalton was coach.

"I probably wasn't consistent enough to get as far as I would have liked. I got to play against the best and did well every so often but I would love to have been playing now with the conditions these players play in. We were amateur in those days and I enjoyed that era but if I was looking at myself with my coaching hat now I'd say I was probably good every so often but not consistent."

He then packed his bags and headed off to Italy as a player coach. He had been working on an oyster farm and the alternative was, as he puts it, to sit around beaches for the summer. Rather than to do that, he set off for his first coaching experience with a little Italian club called Pieve di Cento, just outside Bologna. Having returned for one more season with Counties, he was contacted by Rumilly, where he was given the nickname 'Jules', as in Jules Verne.

Promoted from the second division in his first year, he played against Lourdes and moved there.

"Rumilly was in the Alps whereas Lourdes was a little more toward the south west and a milder climate. Getting older as I was, I thought I'd look after myself and went there (in 1995). We were up and down between the first and second division, and I effectively went coaching from there."

"Coming from New Zealand I found they played the man a lot more than the ball. In fact you didn't really need the ball for the first 10 minutes. Just kicking the ball into the stands and running up and punching the opposition was a regular thing week-in and week-out. So it was another perspective on the game, coming from New Zealand, where we did focus on what we could do with the ball. It was very much a man's game in France, and has always been treated as that.

"And the reason they scored so many tries was generally because if you won the engagement in the first 10 minutes you were usually playing against 12 because they had three players on the ground getting treated. That was how they worked overlaps in France," he muses with a laugh.

He'd begun acquiring his coaching badges in France and had retired from playing when he had a call from home. "My father had just been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease so I went back to look after the family farm and at the same time completed the transition into coaching."

He coached Bay of Plenty for seven seasons, ultimately taking the province to their best season in 2004 when they won the Ranfury Shield for the first time and reached the NPC semi-finals. He was named New Zealand coach of the year.

"It was never a major province in New Zealand rugby but what we did was great, with the group of players we had. We had our ups and downs. We lived a great adventure; I think that's what we think when we look back on it now. We pushed ourselves hard and we got our reward for it, and that's something we'll always have I suppose, so there's some satisfaction there when we do briefly look back."

There followed the chance to work with Robbie Deans as his assistant at the Canterbury Crusaders for two years, in which time they won the last Super 12 in 2005 and the Super 14 in 2006. Moving from a comparatively amateur set-up to a supremely professional organisation, they were, Cotter admits, probably the most influential two years in his coaching career.

Cotter was in the process of renewing his contract when Clermont knocked on his door.

"At first I said no, but they came back and were quite insistent. There was the option to stay with the Crusaders and Robbie, but one of the reasons I first came overseas was the challenge. I didn't make the decision on my own, it was with my wife and family as well, and we thought if we were ever going to go offshore and experience something as a family that would be the moment. We pondered over it for a while before deciding 'it was now or never'."

It has become their home from home. One of his reasons for recently deciding to extend his stay in the Auvergne is that his wife Emily and their kids, Holly (5), Thomas (3) and Arabella (five months) are so happy there.

Cotter likens the mountainous countryside to his native land and enjoys taking long cycles or drives. "Yeah, I jump on my bike and get a bit of wind in my face. They've got some great countryside here. It's pretty much farming land in the background, and I do quite a bit of hunting as well. So yeah, I'll get on my bike and maybe sort out a couple of combinations."

He misses his surfing though. "I'm going home for Christmas and one of the first things I'm going to do is take my board down to the beach and see if I can stand up on it still."

Draw a line across the southern belt of the Top 14, and Clermont are the most northerly, with only Stade Francais in Paris above it, while Brive and Bourgoin are both almost two hours away in either direction.

You ask him what distinguishes Clermont and he says: "It's a town that, firstly, loves rugby; they're very passionate about it. I think Clermont likes that geographical isolation, and probably there's that Gaullist spirit about it as well. There's a statue of Julius Caesar on the hill behind the town, and there's a whole lot of things that add to the history and the culture of the town. Professionally Michelin have always been a major player behind the rugby and are still very much part of the team but there are seven major sponsors in the club now."

"They're good rural people, and they're very respectful, but they're very passionate at the same time. So it's a unique combination of history and people living in the present and always following their team, and there's a certain amount of hope that every year they finally will get to win the competition after 95 years."

There are always stories to add to the mystique of Clermont's pursuit of their holy grail, but one from last year stands out for Cotter. "This fan said to me his father was going to die and he'd asked his son to put a mobile phone in his coffin and to give him a call if we won."

Over the last two seasons Clermont have probably been the best team in France only to suffer their eighth and ninth defeats in the French final. They've been the most prolific side in that time, with their potent brand of ball-in-hand power up front and pace out wide, and play with more depth and width than most sides.

"I think rugby is just about finding space and creating space, and sometimes you can create it with your skill level and sometimes you can create it on a physical level; sometimes you have to shift bodies to create space. So if you can mix both those up and make key decisions on the paddock, you can cater for most games and we're lucky here to have players with speed and pace, and we try and create conditions for those players to express themselves to full advantage."

One of their key decision-makers is Brock James, with whom the canny Cotter has struck Aussie gold given he was relatively unmapped by the Wallabies. Cotter signed him because when he was with the Crusaders, James came on as a replacement for the Western Force in a try-scoring display, having also played for Taranaki against Bay Of Plenty in Cotter's time there. "When Kieran McIntyre wasn't able to make it here, he (James) was the first person I got hold of. It was very lucky timing because two days later he was going back to New Zealand to play for Taranaki, so we got him here just in time."

A points machine, James is constantly looking to challenge himself and his team-mates - which Cotter appreciates - and you sense the coach likes to challenge his players every day too. Clermont were at a low ebb when Cotter arrived, and he has been eulogised by the players and club president alike, not least for instilling some discipline.

Cotter says: "They needed to find a reason for doing things again. That was probably the first thing, and then find the motivation for doing it. And I think once we were all on the same page, they realised they could go further and improve. With the quality of players here they just had to believe they were good players and they could probably achieve something. That's really what it was about, get them excited about what they were doing again."

He seems to have achieved that much all right, and you sense that Clermont and Cotter aren't finished yet.