Geordan Murphy: ‘When people saw the shades they thought I was being a prima donna’

Donnacha Ryan has come a long way in a very short time, from Tipperary across the Pyrenees via Paris for a crack at joining one of rugby’s rarest breeds.

Twelve months on from the most anti-climactic of finishes in a Munster squad given the PRO12 final runaround by the turbo-charged Scarlets, Ireland’s émigré lock lines up in the biggest club game of all with the defiant look of a man hell-bent on doing something no Irish player has done for a long time.

Should Racing 92 succeed in preventing the No. 1 seeds painting the Basque Country green two months after the Grand Slam conquest of the Six Nations, Ryan will become only the fifth Irish player to win the Champions’ Cup with a non-Irish team.