In this extract from his new book Heart and Soul, Trevor Brennanexplains why the defeat to Leinster last year was so devastating - and why you should never cross Frédéric Michalak.

We spent the summer of 2005 in France, visiting the Basque Country around Biarritz, San Sebastian, and French Catalonia before returning to Toulouse for pre-season training. The French have their own way of doing things. Nothing happens in August. Especially in the cities or the bigger towns. If it doesn't have a beach, it closes for the month. Bars, restaurants, shops. You name it, they close. And those that do stay open don't have any customers. Like ourselves.

You won't find a place to eat except fast food or a sandwich in a petrol station. If you arrive on a Sunday in August, you're goose is cooked. As for Sundays in the other 11 months, you're really in trouble if you forget to buy, tea, milk, bread, butter, cigarettes or whatever. It's cold turkey until Monday.

September and October are more mushroom and wine season. A neighbour popped around with a big bag of mushrooms the size of footballs. You cut them and slice them and mix them with garlic. Lovely. Lots of French people have their own patches for picking mushrooms, also known over here as cepes, but will never reveal exactly where they are; they point vaguely towards hills or mountains.

You also see hundreds of men and women picking grapes for the first of the season's wines, with Beaujolais Nouveau usually first on the market on November 18th. It's invariably cheap, awful, and blows the head off you. They call it the worker's wine.

After four finals and two semi-finals in three years, I was as hungry as ever. Patrice Collazo, Christian Labit and David Gerard moved on. In came Yannick Nyanga, the outstanding French backrower from Béziers; Gregory Menkarska, a very good scrummager from Auch and my old team-mate from Leinster, Aidan McCullen. A fluent French speaker with a great sense of humour, he settled in quickly and started the first five games.

Unusually in my time here, we won our first eight games; Toulouse's best start to a championship. Towards the end of 2005, Yannick was one of several Toulouse players to win awards.

I went around to Gareth Thomas' house the night he won the BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year award, as voted for by the viewers. In a year when he captained the Lions, led Wales to the Grand Slam and also won a European Cup winners medal, he was a shoo-in.

Yannick Jauzion won the French Championship Player of the Year, and was also picked on a World XV along with Yannick Nyanga. Jauzion is such a down to earth fella in every sense. He comes from a farming background in Agen and studies agriculture. He also works part-time in a bank on his days off. Nothing fazes him.

To him, he's just doing a job, but what a job he does for us. He weighs in at 106 kilos and is 6ft 5in. You could put him in the secondrow. He's very quick, and runs great lines. It usually takes two or three people to stop him, and yet he also has a great gift for making offloads in the tackle. He constantly opens up gaps for other players.

Nyanga's work-rate is phenomenal. He tackles, tackles, tackles. He'll make four in a row in one phase of play. He's also a good lineout option for us, especially on defence, and he's very, very quick. As a bloke, he's also a good laugh. He's the new playboy of Stade Toulousain. Single, good-looking, black, 23. That says it all.

Guy also picked up an award from the English journalists for Services to Rugby. Only the third Frenchman in 20 years to win it after Philippe Sella and Jean-Pierre Rives. And then there was The Horsebox, T Brennan, who was invited to the 48th Texaco Sportstars Awards as the rugby sports star of 2005. It was an unforgettable night and I was humbled to be in the presence of so many great Irish sports people. Memories are made from nights like that and I felt blessed again to be doing something I love for a living.

The da was bowled over by Ronnie Delaney, an athletics legend and Olympic gold medallist, coming over to our table and tapping me on the shoulder to congratulate me, and later wishing me the best for the rest of the season. A pure gentleman. And there aren't too many nights in your life when you can see old clips of Johnny Giles and get to meet him.

In Europe, we had the swagger and confidence of reigning champions, especially after reaching three finals in a row. For the fourth year running we earned the club a lucrative home quarter-final. I missed the opening 50-28 win at home to Llanelli, due to a stupid calf injury (only the third Heineken Cup game I'd missed in four years with Toulouse). We drew 15-l5 away to Wasps - when we should have won. We beat Edinburgh away, and then again at home, a week later. And I won my 50th cap in the Heineken Cup - 22 with Leinster and 28 with Toulouse.

My landmark was announced as I ran out on to the pitch and I received a huge reception from the 17,500 crowd. We won with a bonus point and afterwards I was presented with my 50th cap by Guy Novès in front of the Sky cameras. He grabbed my hand and went down on bended knee to present it to me. So I knelt down and gave him a big hug before proceeding to the dressingroom for an Irish jig while the lads clapped.

THE WEEK BEFORE we played Wasps at home, an under-strength team suffered our first home defeat in over a year to Bayonne. I scored a try and settled a private score with Richard Dourthe. But it's amazing how much a big match can act as a miracle cure for so many different injuries, because by Tuesday virtually everyone was fit to train. No one wanted to miss a re-run of the final two seasons before, especially in front of a capacity crowd in the football stadium.

On the Wednesday before the Wasps' game, I signed a contract for a fifth season with Toulouse, despite an offer from Michael Cheika to return to Leinster. I felt my future was in Toulouse, and the decision wasn't just about rugby.

We beat Wasps 19-13, but fellas really had to put their bodies on the line; even the likes of Xavier Garbajosa almost played as an extra forward. Michalak made a superb start and our forwards really stood up to Wasps. Everyone, including their players, reckoned it was like an international for intensity and physicality.

Munster's Red Army had invaded the town for their Friday night win away to Castres and came in numbers to both our match and, for three successive nights, to De Danu. Even Wasps' players couldn't get into the bar and so the English pub across the road did a bit of business for a change.

When I gave a rendition of Dublin In the Rare Oul Times, the Munster fans sang along - that was a first and probably a last - and they kept going long after I went home. If I was a Munster player I'd be so proud of them.

As Guy kept reinforcing all week, we still had to beat Llanelli away with a bonus point the following Saturday to earn that home quarter-final. And we did, by 49-42. We had to wait on the results the next day to see who we would be hosting. Leinster were visiting Bath in the final match, and had to win to get through. If they did, they would qualify as eighth seeds and therefore be playing the top seeds - ourselves.

I watched the match alongside a few of the Toulouse lads in De Danu. We were all tucking into a full Irish breakfast when the game kicked off. Because Bath had beaten Leinster in Dublin, we thought they might do the same at home. However, it didn't take long for Leinster to get on the scoreboard. The pace of their backline, and willingness to run from everywhere, cut Bath apart. So confirming that we would be playing my old team.

Immediately I had mixed feelings about that. The three previous years we had avoided each other; now I'd have to play them in the quarter-finals, and all with 11 weeks to think about it.

SOME LIGHT RELIEF was provided when I arrived in training the following Tuesday. The boys were hopping mad, telling stories of things that had happened to them during the night.

Over in the corner of the dressingroom, Freddy Michalak looked shattered, but was laughing away to himself all the same. He'd had a long night.

It all went back to our trip to Llanelli the previous weekend. On arrival in Cardiff airport, one of the boys had emptied the contents of Freddy's bag on to the carousel. He wasn't happy about that.

Before the match, some of the boys put deep heat in Freddy's boots and he had to go searching around for another pair. He was even less amused about that.

Finally, when we arrived back in Blagnac Airport on the Saturday night, his bag had been nicked and reported missing. By now, Freddy was fairly pissed off.

The lads feared there might be repercussions, but figured they'd be safe, as he wouldn't know who to blame. Freddy narrowed it down to four possible culprits: Yannick Jauzion, Yannick Bru, Xavier Garbajosa and Jean-Baptiste Élissalde.

There had been a warning during a scrummaging session on Monday evening. Freddy has a mate in Domino's and suddenly a motorcycle delivery man was driving across the pitch delivering three pepperoni pizzas in the name of our forwards' coach Serge Lairle, along with a bill for €35. Nobody paid him, but we got to have a slice of pizza before settling down to more scrums.

Freddy's dad is a builder, so he headed off, late one night, in his car - his boot filled with ready-made cement, concrete bricks and bags of dirt and rubble. He started off at about 2am at Garba's house, and began building a wall at the front door.

He'd reached about two layers of bricks when, due to the foggy night, he began to think he had the wrong house as Garba's car was parked in between the two houses. Abandoning his first effort he went next door and proceeded to erect a five foot wall, finishing the job with some satisfaction at about 4am.

Garba emerged from his house the next morning and - to his amazement - saw an unfinished two foot wall immediately outside his front door; more amazing though was the trail of footprints through the garden leading to his neighbour's house where a freshly constructed five foot wall now blocked his neighbour's front door. He said nothing, hopped into his car and went training.

In the meantime Freddy had been busy until dawn. He had driven to Bru's house and painted 'Goby' - Yannick's nickname - in big writing all across the front wall. He then drove to Jauzion's house, jacked up his car, and swapped the wheels for cement blocks. He drove on to Élissalde's house and covered his car in muck and rubble.

Freddy, who'd been a busy boy, looked both whacked and happy. "Listen lads," he said to them, "I'm a single lad with no kids and no responsibilities. Do what you like, but I'll always get you back."

This one was set to run.

WE BOOKED INTO our usual hotel for two nights, instead of one, before the game. Family and friends arrived in force, and told me the craic in the bar was mighty. Leinster had brought their biggest ever following for an away game, maybe six or 7,000 invading the city. Apparently, half of them were as interested in the bar as they were in the match. RTÉ and Sky Sports also called in to De Danu, and by all accounts it was a sea of blue everywhere.

Guy Novès kept talking about the Leinster stars, especially the backs, D'Arcy, O'Driscoll, Contepomi, Hickie . . . singling out Yannick Jauzion, Florian Fritz, Vincent Clerc and Cédric Heymans to ask them if they were up to the challenge. In my opinion, all that talk about the Leinster backs may have backfired a little. That said, it's Guy's way, and a successful way, of motivating players. I kept telling Yannick and Florian that they were the best midfield combination in the world.

By the time of the game I was totally drained. I never like being in camp for two nights. I was rooming with Aidan McCullen, another former Leinster player, who was the 23rd man. Because of crushed cartilage which would require an operation at the end of the season, I had only played one or two games in the previous six weeks.

RTÉ and all the Irish papers were on to me. I turned down most interview requests, except for one or two individual ones with French papers and with Brendan Fanning of the Sunday Independent. I tried to talk down the game as much as I could.

That week the demand for tickets, hotels and the rest, was the highest I'd ever experienced since coming here. I was running around the place doing things for people. The whole build-up got to me. I'm not trying to make excuses, but sometimes it's just hard to switch off. You're supposed to be professional, but sometimes you can't manage it.

After another sleepless night for me before the game, we travelled to the ground with a police escort. One of the first people I spotted was Roly Meates, walking around in his thoughts and his usual haze of pipe smoke. That brought back memories. Amid a few thousand red-and-black-clad supporters, there wasn't a chance to speak. Anyway, I was already trying to get into my zone.

I was confident we'd do well. We started quickly, but the referee disallowed what we thought was a perfectly good Vincent Clerc try for a forward pass. Sometimes a decision like this can change a game. Not long after, we let one through; O'Driscoll seemed to waltz untouched through our backs.

Our backrow wastn't pushing out as we were too busy putting up three pods in the lineout. Leinster had either done their homework or Contepomi had read it well. He had one of his best games in a Leinster jersey and they scored some good tries - although some were soft from our point of view.

Early in the second half, I felt I was just coming into the match when I was taken off. I'd been heavily strapped and was worried that if I got a direct knock on it I'd be gone. I had all sorts of padding and rubbing. I took it off nearing half-time as I was feeling a bit freer, although it definitely did affect my game. But that's the coach's call and he knows his stuff.

It was very frustrating to then watch it slip away from us, in part due to self-inflicted wounds. And to only lose by six points!

Arthur Tanner made his way over to our bench when he knew the game was over, and they had won. He commiserated with me, but congratulated me on all I'd achieved over the years in Toulouse. I was gutted but appreciated the gesture and the sentiments. We embraced each other and I wished him and Leinster the best of luck in the semi-finals.

Of all the many wonderful friends I've made through Leinster - way too many to count - there was none better than Arthur. Not alone is he a brilliant doctor for the players, but for their families as well, if necessary. If he thought you weren't up to a game he'd tell you honestly: "There's bigger things than this game."

A very genuine, accommodating man, on and off the pitch. He's not just a doctor, he's more a friend to all the players. He's a doctor to the stars and could be so much up his own arse, but he's not. He's just Arthur, and will drink pints with any of the lads. Just a lovely, lovely man.

This encouraged me to congratulate some of the Leinster lads as they made their way around the pitch to thank their supporters. I hit the changing rooms and sat there, shocked that we had just lost a quarter-final at home, and for the first time in Le Stadium.

Various sponsors, TV crews and journalists came into the dressingroom for the next hour. I watched players coming and going from the showers, taking off strapping, getting dressed, doing interviews. I just sat there, drinking my bottle of Heineken. Followed by another, and another . . . The Cup sponsors have rarely come in handier, and when I looked over to the corner I saw Freddy doing the same.

Some players tapped me on the head, and said, "sorry Trev, we let you down today". I'd obviously made this one a bit personal. I'd never done that before, not even when we played Munster, so they realised how much it meant to me. I contemplated going into the Leinster dressingroom to congratulate them, but couldn't bring myself to do it.

Eventually, everyone had left the dressingroom except me, Freddy and Guy Novès. I felt bad, but felt even worse for Freddy, who had kicked badly throughout and who had thrown an intercept pass that led to a Cameron Jowitt try.

Freddy was in a terrible state. I went over to him, put my arms around him and told him it was only a game, or something useless like that. What can you say? He'd been booed off the pitch against Ireland in Paris and now again today by the Toulouse public.

I could see that Guy wanted a moment on his own with Freddy. Like me, Freddy probably figured that the longer you hung around, by the time you emerged everybody would be gone.

Unfortunately, they weren't.

Head down, I went through the crowds and rang the brother. They were in a typical French bar in St Michelle. On my way to the car, I met Reggie Corrigan's mother and father, Brian O'Driscoll's mother and father, Denis Hickie's mother and father and Girvan Dempsey's mother and father; gave them all a kiss and said hello.

Even in those moments it was lovely seeing them again. I know from my own experience that parents feel the joy and despair of victory or defeat, if not more, than the players. It can take them until the middle of the following week to recover. I could have done with some consoling myself.

Losing that game was a huge disappointment and surprise to me, and one of the hardest to take, because of who it was. It had been a mad week in the bar, but the defeat hurt so much that I couldn't even go near it. I went to the bar in St Michelle to meet family and friends. I ordered a round of about 50 drinks, not for myself, but for all the people from Leixlip. We tried to drown our sorrows, and half watched Munster make heavy weather of beating Perpignan.

After a rake of beer, we went to Bodega Bodega. We drank until the early hours before finishing in Le Dauphine, where everyone danced to the sounds of AC/DC. I was sitting at the bar when I noticed in the mirror one of the Leixlip lads walking past in his underpants. By that stage I'd forgotten we'd played a match.

There was a good mix of Toulouse and Leinster fans, and there's nothing you can do but adopt a brave face. It's sport. It happens sometimes. They came over here as the underdogs and won, and more power to them. And there are so many good people involved with Leinster.

EARLY THE NEXT morning I had a phone call from Shane Horgan's father, John. He commiserated with me for the defeat, congratulated me on all I'd achieved in Toulouse, and thanked me for the way I'd helped to look after his son when Shaggy first broke into the Leinster squad. It was a hell of a nice gesture.

That day, I invited family and friends to a barbecue at my house. Later we drove to the bar, which looked like a war zone. It was still hopping. Flights had been cancelled. A few favours had to be called in as about 150 kegs, that's 10,000 pints, had been drunk in the previous three days, and the bar needed re-stocking.

I may have said it was "just another game", as players do, and as is always the case, that was all bollox. I was playing against friends, against a province who'd let me go from a country which wouldn't pick me - despite playing for the best club side in the world for four years. I'd played with Leinster since I was 17 with under-age teams right through to senior; 10 years altogether. And it all just caved in massively on me.

And whatever about my own performance, it was the worst performance by Toulouse in my time here. We were shite. You have to give credit to Leinster. They scored some cracking tries. The one Denis Hickie finished off in the corner after Contepomi had run turnover ball from under his own posts, was vintage Leinster. As good a try as any visiting side has scored in Toulouse.

But for me, what Leinster did that day against us was a once-off. It was partly luck, because three weeks later they were exposed by Munster. Toulouse definitely under-performed hugely in that quarter-final.

People will say I'm being bitter, but I'm not. That defeat rankled for a long time.

Trevor Brennan: Heart and Soul, with Gerry Thornley, is published by Red Rock Press (16.99) and is available countrywide from this week.