For a man meant to be recovering from one of the messiest of rugby divorces Dean Richards is remarkably happy. In fact, for someone who once seemed to delight in portraying himself as the epitome of the strong silent type, he is almost garrulous.
After six years in charge of Leicester Richards has swapped arguably the most successful side in European rugby for one desperate to keep its toehold on the top rung of French rugby. Whereas Leicester under Richards won back-to-back Heineken Cups to add to their four successive league titles, Grenoble have yet to make a mark on the junior competition, the European Challenge Cup. Or, as the official guide puts it, get beyond the "participants" stage.
However, there are compensations. Richards now lives in a hamlet some 10 miles out of town. He has time to deliver his four children to their French schools at eight each morning, can indulge his passion for riding a 1,300cc motorbike through the mountains and coaches at the prettiest of rugby grounds. Stade Lesdiguières, beside the river Drac, is a monument to what can be achieved in concrete and steel and, when the autumn sun catches the peaks surrounding Grenoble, it is hard to imagine anything less like Welford Road.
There are other benefits. "There aren't the egos or the politics that go with coaching a big side," says Richards as he prepares to welcome Leeds today. He has a handful of internationals but none is a household name except in Fiji and Tonga and most will be missing tonight because domestic survival is more important to club and coach.
This season the leagues in France have been reorganised. Instead of two pools and play-offs there is one top league, much like the Zurich, with three to be relegated. Grenoble got in by the skin of their teeth, managing only five wins in a season which ended with an 81-17 thrashing by Pau. Since July, when Richards took over, they have won four and drawn two from 10, including victory over Pau.
Gates are up (more than 14,000 watched Toulouse, last season's Heineken runners-up) and players and staff, particularly the coach, are smiling.
After the acrimonious end at Leicester Richards had meant to take a year off. The terms of his settlement with the club do not allow him to talk about the parting but from close friends it is easy to see how debilitating the affair became.
Leicester, minus the pack away at the World Cup, were bouncing along the bottom of the league. Even with their internationals they failed to get beyond the Heineken pool stage and voices on the non-playing side at Welford Road were saying "Deano was in trouble" and that Martin Johnson would make a better director of rugby.
Richards then became embroiled in a bust-up about the time his stars were devoting to sponsors when the club was in a mess on the field. Within weeks he was gone.
That was not the only cause of Richards' anguish. Apparently the outline terms of his departure were quickly agreed but the detail delivered at funereal pace, with Richards feeling he was kept dangling on a string. And that, after 23 years playing and coaching at Welford Road, ultimately led to him insisting every mention of his name be removed so that Deano's Bar has gone and every piece of personal memorabilia reclaimed.
"Unfortunately I can't really go into it," said Richards this week. "At some stage it was always going to come to an end and I accepted that. When I became director of rugby I said it could last a week or 10 years. I had a great five out of six years.
"The job became a bit of a chore at the end but at the same time I was working with some great players and some great guys, even the year I didn't enjoy it so much."
But were some of those old friendships ruptured at the end? "I don't know whether they have been or they haven't," says Richards. "From the players' point of view I hope they do well. I tipped them to be champions and I think they will be."
All Richards will say is that the agreement with Leicester took "a lot longer than it should have done. I was messed about quite a bit" - so much so that he and his wife Nicky decided to give rugby a rest and move to the farmhouse and 20 acres they still own near Carcassonne.
There was a "cloak and dagger" meeting with one of the larger French clubs but Richards said No. "We had set our minds on spending a year in France with the kids, not being really involved in rugby" when Grenoble "asked me to sit down and listen. I drove up the Rhone valley, turned right, started coming into the mountains and thought 'Wow'.
"They say that at the end of every street in Grenoble there is a mountain. We are 20 minutes from the nearest ski resorts. You've got downhill skiing, cross-country skiing and luge. You've got mountain walking, bungee jumping, parascending, hydro skiing and whitewater rafting.
"It's so much more civilised. In the UK you constantly rush from one thing to another. Here they insist you take an hour and a half for lunch and they find it strange that anyone should work through.
"You go from Leicester where they have 70 employees, not including the players, to us with 12 or 13. It's a lot more personal. Everyone is pushing in the right direction instead of the politics you get when there are more people involved. At Leicester I was drawn away from the rugby side more and more. Here other people do those jobs for me. I'm not getting phone calls at 11 o'clock at night now."
Richards signed for two years. Will he stay longer? For once he is slightly circumspect: "Potentially."
Leicester v Calvisano
Kick-off: 2.45pm today
Venue: Welford Road
Calvisano are the makeweights in the most treacherous pool and Italy's second best club will struggle to keep the scoreline respectable against a resurgent Tigers side that gives Lewis Moody his first start since the World Cup. James Buckland also makes a debut in place of suspended hooker George Chuter.
