One scarcely had the stomach for watching sport last week, much less writing about it, so one can hardly imagine what it was like playing it. Certainly the Leinster players I spoke to who had spent Tuesday afternoon horrified by the events in New York found it difficult to come to terms with actually playing a Celtic League game against Pontypridd that very evening. A minute's silence didn't seem a sufficient gesture.

"Should we be doing this one?," one of them reflected during that minute. Most probably the answer was 'no'. It would transpire that the PSV Eindhoven footballers, for example, had asked that their Champions League game in France not be played that night but UEFA, crassly, insisted the game went ahead before then calling off all their games on Wednesday and Thursday.

Even allowing for sports' status as an utterly irrelevant form of escapism in the greater scheme of things, there was something inherently wrong about the Celtic League midweek programme going ahead as scheduled.

Too often sport conducts itself as if in a bubble and immune from the outside world. Invariably the lead had to come from elsewhere, and Friday's national day of mourning obliged rugby, and sport in this country and elsewhere, to be postponed.

Could Irish/Celtic rugby have done more? You hear of the Spurs midfielder Tim Sherwood announcing he would donate his win bonuses for the remainder of the season to the relief fund in New York. You see opposing teams in Italian football linking hands with each other in a circle for a minute's "clapping", as opposed to standing separately as normal.

You always feel in these circumstances that sport can do more and rugby is no different. On witnessing my third pre-match minute's silence by Sunday in the Sportsground, I still felt it wasn't a sufficient gesture in itself. Could not the celtic unions have knocked heads immediately and concluded: 'look, lets not do this for the next few days and the weekend'?

Then again, it transpires that even baseball resumed in America yesterday, partly as a means of providing an entertaining diversion. In any event, the show went on, and the Irish provinces continued on their winning ways, augmenting a clean sweep of victories in the opening round of matches by putting together three clean sweeps in succession over the final nine days of the pool stages.

Thus, for the record, collectively the Irish quartet have won their last dozen matches in succession.

Their reward has been home draws in the quarter-finals at the beginning of December, all of which is quite ironic given it was the Scots and especially the Welsh who campaigned strongly for the competition, whereas the Irish were more reluctant participants.

No doubt the Irish provinces' dominance of the pool stages will be derided in some quarters on the grounds that the Scots and especially the Welsh weren't really trying. Well, boo hoo.

In point of fact, the Welsh clubs tried a good deal harder than the results might indicate and there's a fair amount of gnashing of teeth after their clubs achieved a winning ratio of 37 per cent, as against the Scots' 50 per cent and the Irish provinces' 80 per cent.

A press conference yesterday with the Welsh international management was mostly taken up by what one newspaper has called "the Irish question" and Graham Henry has accused Welsh clubs of not taking the Celtic League seriously because it didn't count in terms of qualifying for Europe.

It is true that Ebbw Vale, for one, fielded a weakened team away to Leinster because Mike Ruddock said they were "prioritising" a domestic affair against Swansea the following Saturday. This was an especially ironic snub to the tournament given Ebbw Vale were shoehorned into the competition as a ninth Welsh club.

Bridgend adopted a similar approach for the trip to Ulster but these were exceptions rather than the rule. In particular, the Welsh clubs were taken aback by the performance levels of the provinces.

Both Rob Howley and the Cardiff coach Rudy Joubert have admitted they genuinely wanted to beat Munster and thought they would do so before last Saturday.

What has particularly stunned Welsh observers is the comparative strength in depth of the Irish provinces, so much so that a second-string Leinster could beat Swansea on their own patch, and Munster could run in 60 with a second string away to Caerphilly. What's more, it now extends to a fourth province more than ever before.

The successful transfer of several young players to Connacht resulted in seven of Sunday's side being 21 or under. As has long been argued here before, Connacht are now progressing both to their own benefit and by widening their player base.

With Munster remaining the standard bearers and Leinster seemingly maturing into the side they were always capable of becoming, a host of young players are beginning to emerge and are now getting games that otherwise they would never have.

In light of an Irish-Welsh head-to-head record of 16-2, Dafydd James admitted they were "genuinely surprised" by the quality of the Irish provinces. There are, perhaps, mitigating factors, and the Welsh captain Dai Young yesterday made the valid point that the foot-and-mouth epidemic may still be having a ripple affect.

This has resulted in the Irish players being fresher right now, a point Howley supported by adding that in addition to the Lions tour Wales toured Japan, whereas the Irish players had a training camp in Poland.

In any case, this is Wales' problem, and it's hard not to think that there will be some immediate spin-offs. Certainly the provinces seem far better set for the Euro campaigns which are about to start the weekend after next than their Welsh counterparts.

While the celtic formguide mightn't have as much relevance in Murrayfield next Saturday (10 of the Scots' 25-man squad is still exiled) it's still encouraging that a high proportion of the Irish squad look in pretty good nick for such an embryonic stage of the campaign.

The Scots, too, are thrilled by the advent of the Celtic League, and would like it expanded. As in Ireland, they've been pleasantly surprised by the attendances. Glasgow drew 20,000 to their four home games in a 5,000 capacity ground, doubling last season's average in Europe, while Edinburgh's crowds are up to the 3-5,000 mark.

Glasgow (with nine of the Scottish squad), in particular, have come good, and with Todd Blackadder shortly arriving in Edinburgh to augment the beneficial acquisition of Cameron Blades at Glasgow, and the Borders coming on board next season, they seem to have turned the corner.

No, the main lesson to be learned from the pool stages of the Celtic League simply confirms what we've known for a couple of years now. That Irish rugby has better structures than its celtic counterparts. And it could even be that the Scots are catching up quick.