You can tell from their body language what is going to unfold. Unfortunately there was some Brigitte Bardot clone standing out in the middle of the field in Le Stadium Toulouse last Saturday so I didn't give a toss what the Leinster team were shaping up to do.

My gaze was temporarily averted as an impressive figure walked by the centre circle. A languid southern hemisphere gait, relaxed, it was the man of the moment, it was him, Leinster's firstchoice out-half. . . Christian Warner.

Coincidentally I watched last year's number one outhalf for Leinster play outstandingly well for the Wellington Hurricanes against the Blue Bulls in the Super 14 Series last week.

What was his name again?

David Holyfield? Evander Holwell? In fairness David Holwell was sex on a stick, one of the best out-halves to play in Ireland. Ever.

Seriously, I thought he was that good.

Felipe, what was he doing for those seasons? Well the Leinster Branch can tell you about the first one, Holwell accounts for the second, and if Christian Warner hadn't got injured just before the Heineken Cup got started Felipe might have had to buy another job-lot of Preparation H for all that sitting around on those cold, hard benches.

In last week's player ratings I gave Felipe 10 out of 10. I don't normally give out 10s, they are normally reserved for the Paul O'Connells and Brian O'Driscolls of this world . . . Simon Best gets them too, except that the 1 is missing.

Keith Gleeson was also a recipient.

In the 1980 Moscow Olympics I remember Nadia Comaneci got a perfect 10 for her performance on the beam.

A 10 in gymnastics means absolute perfection, not one impure athletic movement or involuntary action.

Hard to reconcile that with Felipe Contepomi's performance because he had a game of absolute imperfection.

His first 20 minutes were as bad as I have seen from him.

The last 60 were north of special. He got a 10 because he was the catalyst and Leinster would not have won without him.

Some of the older members of the press corp from time to time drone on about a perceived conveyor belt of quality international outhalves that Ireland have produced . . . Jack Kyle, Mick English, Barry McGann etc.

I'm sure they were all decent players, but everything is relative. Argentina have produced in recent times three out-halves that no Irish outhalf could be compared to.

Hugo Porta, Diego Dominguez and Christian Warner's replacement, Dominguez being in my view the pick of them. But Contepomi still has time to produce more genius.

One of the things that intrigues me about Contepomi is that the Pumas don't play pretty rugby, although they did throw the ball around brilliantly when they beat the Lions (21-21) in Cardiff last year. Contepomi was truly outstanding that night. Where does the skill come from? I suppose it's innate.

One of his greatest abilities is to be able to play in slow motion while the play around him goes in fast-forward mode.

Great players have an ability to seem to have easy time on the ball and to look composed as space is sucked up.

It also takes bravery to attack the line the way he does and stand up under pressure and look for openings. It's not his opposite number you would be worried about, it's the axe murderers meandering into that channel that dissuade you from taking another second out of the ball.

Contepomi got into the game just after 20 minutes with a booming, relieving kick . . . it kick-started his karma.

O'Driscoll's try was a defining moment in the match.

It was a pre-rehearsed move, but the execution was excellent. Contepomi stared at Freddie Michalak while he threw the perfect pass back inside after drifting a couple of feet . . . difficult thing to do to time your pass blind. He couldn't see Horgan coming. If he had looked at Horgan the cover would have caught him.

Horgan did what he does best, he affected a line-break while staying on his feet and then returned the pass to his outhalf. Sat-nav was on the blink now and the Leinster backs would have to path find by intuition.

When you get in behind, particularly from a line-out, it is very easy to just move the ball to the wing. It's a natural progression. For Contepomi to step and cut back in would not have been the natural thing to do, O'Driscoll's line was direct and unstoppable, did he know