Europe's team of the season are coming to Murrayfield

Never mind winning, Stade Rochelais have never been to the Top 14 finals. In fact they have never even made the semis. The club’s natural habitat is the ProD2, France’s rough and ready second division but instead the “Pirates”, as they are known, have plundered and pillaged their way to the top of the league.

Last season, La Rochelle finished ninth with 54 points. To date they already boast 72 points (ahead of this weekend’s results) and lead the league, eight points ahead of second-placed Clermont and a whopping 16 points ahead of Montpellier in third.

“A balanced budget, an attractive style of rugby, a jubilant fan base… the club of La Rochelle is the sensation of the season,” is how one French news outlet described Stade Rochelais and it is difficult to argue. Nothing that has gone before prepared us or, you suspect, them for their current success.

The bizarre thing is La Rochelle have managed this with a squad of discards, the “old firm” and oddities. They boast the 150kgs Uini Atonio, the French prop who was the biggest man at the 2015 Rugby World Cup; the club has one winger, Gabriel Lacroix, who is 5 ft 7½ and another, Vincent Rattez, who tips the scales at 75kgs (under 12 stones), the sort of frame usually found attached to a Tour de France velo.

The club fields halfbacks, whose combined age is 70 – Australian Brock James and former Springbok Ricky Januarie, were unwanted by Clermont and Lyon respectively. The giant Fijian lock/flanker Jone Qovu joined from Racing two seasons ago.

With the possible exception of Kevin Gourdon and Atonio, Stade Rochelais are a team without stars; even the double World Cup winning, former All Black Victor Vito spent much of his Test career playing second fiddle to Jerome Kaino.

But the Kiwi flanker appears to be the final piece in the La Rochelle jigsaw, earning rave reviews as his intelligent linking game complements the club’s ball-in-hand style. When he initially signed last summer did he ever imagine that La Rochelle would be leading the pack?

“No,” is the blunt response. “Before I came I was hoping that the club could make the top six because that should be the goal for any club, especially one that has only recently joined the Top 14, like La Rochelle.

“After I watched the very first game against Clermont [a 30-30 draw], knowing they are a very strong club, I still wasn’t thinking top of the table but I thought that we could be in the running. I never, never would have envisioned being top.

“We definitely don’t have the big names like some of the big clubs, Toulon or Racing, but something is clicking. I guess the style of play comes into it but I think it’s just the competitiveness within the team.

“It’s a long season and there are not too many egos around. Of course we are fighting for positions but at the end of the day it’s always about team first and that is something that is nice to see.”

Vito earned 33 All Blacks caps in a five-year international career that took in two World Cups, but he concedes he knew he was “second cab off the rank”, which helped him make the decision to move abroad, and he is honest enough to admit that finance played a massive part.

He joined the unfancied “Pirates” because lock Jason Eaton, another former All Black who played alongside Vito at the Hurricanes, captains the club. Eaton picked up the phone and insisted that La Rochelle was full of “good people” and he was right on that score.

The club has had just three head coaches in the past 25 years (Edinburgh feel like they have had 25 coaches in the past three years) and the present incumbent Patrice Collaco has been there since 2011.

More important is president Vincent Marling, who has guided the club for 25 years. He was the driving force behind the “Grow Together” campaign launched in 2015 that has since persuaded 500 local businesses to support/sponsor the club.