Hogging the ERC pie just not on, mon ami Serge

On Rugby: Four Irish wins over the weekend, an Irish 1-2-3 atop the Celtic League, Connacht moving within striking distance of possibly ensuring four teams in next season's Heineken European Cup and now perhaps the ultimate all-Irish match-up in next weekend's European Cup semi-finals, thereby guaranteeing an Irish team in the final.

It's safe to say that never before has an Irish rugby match so captured and divided such vast swathes of the Irish sporting public, nor indeed of the rugby world abroad. Irish rugby is holding centre stage like never before, and that is a cause of celebration in its own right.

Timely too, in the light of the English and French clubs flexing their pecs prior to next year's attempts to renew what has became known as the Paris Accord; the template for the divvying up of funds and tournament format which has helped made this tournament a beacon of stability and progress in the often tumultuous professional era.

The European Cup has always had its upheavals, which makes lectures from our English brethren all the harder to take. Themselves and the Scots bypassed the inaugural tournament in the 1995-96 season, and the English clubs boycotted the fourth running of Europe's premier club/provincial competitions in 1998-99, no doubt feeling their display of muscular might would bring the tournament to its knees.

At 7.30pm one evening in April 1999 in Paris, the great unmovable objects and skilled negotiators that were Vernon Pugh and Tom Kiernan, along with a few of their allies in the five unions/federations, met with the club representatives of England and France. The meeting didn't break up until 6am, but the agreements reached that night were cast in stone until the completion of next season.

Now the English clubs, through the chief executive of Premier Rugby, Mark McCafferty, who is also a member of the ERC board of directors, and their French counterparts, through the medium of Serge Blanco, president of the French League, have been making not so veiled threats to boycott the tournament unless their demands for greater slices of the ERC pie along with more control are met by next season.

McCafferty says they are not actually threatening to boycott the tournament, but in the same breath says withdrawing from Europe would not imperil the English clubs financially and they need answers by the end of this season if they are to start filling fixture spaces the season after next. So, clearly, no threat there.

Blanco echoed McCafferty's sentiments when stating: "In 10 years of the Heineken Cup only once has an English or French team not won it. The Celts are profiting from us and that is unacceptable. We could boycott the Heineken Cup and our clubs would not lose money. We could do without it."

If that is true it merely confirms how insular both the great superpowers are. Don't they see any correlation between the Heineken Cup's status and the end-of-season scrap for qualification with domestic games? Presumably though, neither Leicester nor Perpignan were inclined to decline the €500,000 hand-outs from Lansdowne Road quarter-finals in the last two seasons, no less than when Biarritz profited handsomely from a quarter-final in Lansdowne Road against Leinster in front of 46,000 people?

Nor presumably, did Blanco and the Biarritz bean counters mind Munster's travelling Red Army, estimated at 15,000, swelling the Estadio Anoeta capacity to 32,000 in the quarter-finals last season? Perhaps they can also do without the millions they've generated from successive home quarter-finals, much like Toulouse did for three years in a row - and thereby build the best training, playing and spectator facilities of any club in Europe.

It's also worth bearing in mind an all-French final remains probably the nightmare scenario for tournament organisers and sponsors alike.

Remember the hard sell for the Toulouse-Perpignan final in Lansdowne Road three seasons ago when the attendance of 28,600 was the lowest for any of the last nine deciders? The ERC were roundly condemned for sticking to their guns on a pre-ordained "neutral" venue then and since, and undoubtedly they made mistakes in the advance ticket-selling and marketing of that final. But they learnt from them, and for the first time can declare the upcoming final in Cardiff on May 20th a sell-out.

And why is that? Because of an all-Irish semi-final. Munster supporters, who have dug deeper than anyone in supporting their team in this tournament, and their Leinster counterparts have driven the ticket rush ever since the quarter-finals were completed. It ain't Biarritz fans driving this ticket rush, Serge. Were it a Toulouse-Perpignan semi-final would it be a sell-out in advance? No chance. The ERC marketing people would already be in trauma.

Perhaps a greater element of proportionality could be conceded in the forthcoming round of ERC board discussions, whereby 85 per cent is divvied up between the six countries and the remaining 15 per cent is related to performances. But quite why the six unions who founded this tournament should hand over control of the tournament to two groupings motivated by self-interest is mind-boggling.

Blanco's stance that the Celts are profiting from the French and English, based purely on who has won the tournament, is from the school of might-is-right politics. An Anglo-French carve-up would be no good for the tournament, and perhaps even no good for the Anglos and the French. A successful tournament needs variety.

With the current posturing in mind, it would be just beautiful if one of the Irish provinces could beat Biarritz in the final. Timely too.