Play the game or our heads will explode

Sideline Cut: This Munster-against-Leinster business is starting to make those of us from the many other provinces a little jealous. The way people are going on, you would swear dear old Éire had only two green fields instead of four. But I suppose it is a relief. Connacht seems to have turned itself into some kind of cultural Disneyworld, with roughly four million arts-and-crafts festivals taking place every year now in a land that once specialised in rain, loneliness, poteen, rugged Hollywood movies, graveyards, mountains, mist, doomed All-Irelands, terrific funerals, tears, beauty, dark love affairs, sheep with no road manners, Pee Flynn, mawkish playwrights and other things of that nature.

Drug-addled pop stars and gorgeous but reclusive French film stars bought up chateaux in Connacht because they wanted a winter of peace, quiet, torment and the rest, not because they wanted to catch the Oughterard Burning Man Festival or the Balla-polooza Rock Classic.

It's a sad state of affairs when the only way the 1980s superstar Tom Selleck can buy a thatched (10-bedroom, marble floor, hot tub, heated pool) cottage is by agreeing to judge the Cong Song Show.

And Ulster has become nothing more than a small business conference, with start-up this and positivity that. All the energy that used to go into pounding Lambeg drums, belting out The Sash and flinging their spectacular if rather dangerous Molotov Cocktails into the Belfast sky is now bouncing around the Wee Six and being channelled into "productivity", which means that Norn Iron is probably going to be the wealthiest place on earth in about 10 years.

(And God, can you imagine the lectures that will be delivered to Down South when the self-righteous hoors from both sides of "the cultural divide" are all rolling in it?)

No, this is definitely the time for Leinster and Munster to stand up and take a bow. Credit where it is due.

Of course, attempting to get our heads around the significance of The Semi-Final, many of us had to consult a map just to identify exactly where Leinster is located. For many decades, most people had gone through life happy to consider Leinster as Dublin and a great many small towns that all resembled Kinnegad.

In fairness, they have a fair few counties in Leinster, most of whose residents have the good manners to stay quiet about it. No fear that you wouldn't know which counties belong in Munster, as they have been shouting about it from the rooftops for God knows how long.

There is something undeniably romantic about the thought of the finest and most virile young men from both provinces meeting for a match that will decide for once and for all the superiority of the provinces.

Rumour has it both camps are preparing in the traditional ways for tomorrow's game - which is being touted as The Big One by everyone from Tony Ward to Tony Fenton.

The Leinster boys have been putting in some hard hours at the tanning salons. Down in Munster, The Pack have daubed themselves in calf's blood and spent a few days roaming the wilds of north Clare while Mick Galwey and Peter Clohessy flogged them with the branches of birch trees. They made it back to Thomond by nightfall, reportedly bloody but unbowed, which is just the way they love it down there.

But radically different as the lifestyles may be, the fact remains that the rugby stars of Leinster and Munster are, in a sense, brothers in arms. That is what gives this game such a noble edge. It is friend against friend, brother against brother. Many of these lads ate porridge together at the solid-oak breakfast tables of Ireland's most gilded schools. They gaily flicked white cotton towels at one another as they skipped out of ice-cold showers. They tossed back their first bottles of Pilsner together, tossed back several more, sang lustily to Oasis, pulled girls, defiled a historic statue or two and ate breakfast on Stephen's Green as the sun came up.

These are guys that "made it", winning caps for the Ireland team together, sharing many a gruelling training camp and putting their bodies on the line. Hours spent shedding sweat and inhibitions in the sauna, laughing together at popular films like There's Something About Mary and playing practical jokes involving boxer shorts and luxury cars meant that the divide between Leinster and Munster did not seem like such a big thing.

They have spent untold hours pumping steel together and enjoying back-stage privileges at the Electric Picnic festival. These are guys that have spent many memorable nights at Annabel's, where they are a certified hit with the ladies, wearing slightly too much aftershave and modest smiles that admit they know they have been touched by the gods.

For years, Munster or Leinster did not really matter when it came to our bally rugby heroes; they were simply the beautiful and the best. Axel, Drico, Rog, Hicks, Darce, Big Mal, Shaggy, Wally, Donners, Girve the Swerve, Reggie: it did not matter whence they came, only that they were ours.

This weekend, however, you have to choose your poison. It is tough for us neutrals or outsiders to know who to shout for in this affair. The main concern about a Leinster victory is that Dublin publicans will feel entitled to charge a tenner a pint for months afterwards. And Carlow people might start to get lippy on account of the Dricmeister having once stopped in Castledermot for a tank of unleaded.

Of course, the problem with Munster winning is that they will feel compelled to write and stage at least a half dozen bloody plays about the thing - In Rog We Trust, Naked We Stood, The Blood Red of Thomond, Claw's Revenge or something along those lines - which RTÉ will manage to run in conjunction with their marathon Beckett season.

As far as detailed analysis goes, the consensus seems to be that Leinster ought to win because they have better-looking players and believe rugby is a game of panache: in short, it is a team made up of what England's Geordie prop Mick Skinner used fondly refer to as "Jessies".

It is said that when the Leinster and Munster boys "get down" on the dance floor at Reynards to the sound of Kanye West and other hip-hop artists, the east coast boys always make a show of their country cousins with their easy and casually sexy moves.

However, the very fact that the Munster lads are rubbish at nightclub dancing is one of the reasons the experts have cited them to win. And while the Leinster lads groove on the floor, admiring one another's form, the country lads make hay with the ladies, employing the charm and gift of the gab for which the province is famous.

The theory goes that Munster will win because that is what Munster do, because people demand they should do so and because they are lumbering, tough, honest lads and have an endless repertoire of ballads that they are willing to sing in the pub afterwards (Oh, and they also have Christian Cullen in reserve, who in his prime was one of the best Jessies in the history of the game).

It is hard to know. But the unavoidable conclusion must be that one of the two of them better go on and win the whole show after causing all this fuss.

It was easier back in the late 1990s, when Ulster were cock of the walk and we all politely applauded as they conquered Europe, solemnly sang the anthem, quoted scripture and celebrated with a nice dry sherry.

So who will be next? Munster? Leinster? Good grief, just play the blasted game, before our heads explode. (And you know, don't you, that it is going to end in a draw.)