THE tiny Borders town of Jedburgh will be well represented at Murrayfield later this week, with Greig Laidlaw expected to be at the heart of the action for Gloucester as they take on Stade Francais in the European Challenge Cup final on Friday night, before all Neil McIlroy’s logistical planning as team manager at Clermont Auvergne is put to the test in the main event, the Champions Cup final, against Saracens the following afternoon.

And that Jedburgh connection will get even closer during the summer, when Laidlaw will join the French side on a three-year contract, in a move which McIlroy happily confesses to having played a key role in facilitating.

“I was pretty hands on. I’ve known Greig for a long time, known his parents, his family. I’ve kept an eye on how things are going; and he’s kept in touch with me and Clermont. His agent’s a friend and a former Clermont player as well, so it was a good one to do,” explains the former Jed-Forest prop, who arrived in France 19 years ago in a desperate attempt to prolong his professional career after a brutal round of cutbacks by the Scottish Rugby Union, and has never returned home. “Greig was over in France a couple of weeks ago house hunting and we had a beer together.

“I said: ‘To think that back in the day when I was playing at Jed that we’d maybe end up at your dad’s house on a Saturday night for a post-pub party and you were probably sitting upstairs as a three-year-old. And now, to find us both here at Clermont, having taken such different roads to get here, it is the strangest thing – but it’s fantastic, it’s magical’.”

McIlroy’s hyperbole is understandable. His French odyssey really has been dreamlike.

If he was perhaps fortunate to be among the 120 home-based players offered a professional contract when the SRU set up four professional districts in the summer of 1996, he certainly didn’t deserve to be thrown on the scrapheap when financial reality belatedly struck home at Murrayfield less than two years later.

It was a painful blow, but rather than politely ask Scottish Borders Council for his job back, McIlroy packed his bags and headed off for France, playing one year with Nice and two with Beziers.

When his playing career did reach its natural conclusion, his first thoughts were to return home. He applied for a job in the police force, only to be turned down on medical grounds due to a knee injury suffered a few years earlier.

It proved to be another setback that was followed by a startlingly positive outcome.

McIlroy took a job as video analyst with Beziers instead, before following head coach Alain Hyardet to Clermont and rising to the role of team manager, with responsibilities and a budget which make him one of the most powerful figures in the French game.

McIlroy was back in Scotland last week, laying the groundwork ahead of Clermont’s quest for Champions Cup glory.

They have made it to the final twice before, and come up short on both occasions.

They face a formidable challenge this time against reigning champions Saracens – but given their manager’s record of thriving in adversity, it would be foolish to write them off.