Despite defeats Irish system has merit

On Rugby:So the centrally contracted Irish system is not all it's cracked up to be whereas the English system is now glorious. This is the same Irish system that maximises smaller playing numbers to yield three Triple Crowns in the last four years, as well as the winners and two semi-finalists of the Heineken European Cup last year, and the same English system that hasn't produced a finalist since 2004.

There's a need for perspective when using the European Cup as a barometer of the strength of respective leagues and systems, especially one campaign or even one weekend. After all, this is also the English system which hasn't earned them a top-three Six Nations finish in the four years since they won the World Cup, wheeling their players out on the Sunday before they came to Croke Park and crocking a few along the way.

The thing is, England's system - infighting et al - better serves their clubs, and that was shown in their weekend performances. They may only have had one or two matches in the preceding eight weeks, but at least their players returned to their club environments.

In contrast to the playing caps of £2.5 million in England, Stade and Biarritz have annual playing budgets of €11.5 million and €10 million, yet this is the first time in 10 years that France closed down their domestic league for the Six Nations, and the first time they haven't had at least one semi-finalist.

Ireland's system is geared first and foremost to the Irish team. If the IRFU seriously conduct a review into what happened this season and over the weekend, and one wonders if that is the case, this should be uppermost in mind.

Hindsight constituting 20-20 vision, and past results and performances are always put in a clearer context by subsequent events, Munster's achievement last year looks even better now. No superlative was left unused for their semi-final and final wins over Leinster and Biarritz, who two weeks later put 40 points on Toulouse to win the French Championship.

Less so their rugged, hard-earned quarter-final win over Perpignan, which was widely criticised by many pundits. But some of us always felt that the quarter-final performance deserved much more credit than it generally received, and they had dug incredibly deep to subdue an inspired and monstrous Perpignan pack.

The back-to-back third and fourth rounds of the pool stages and the quarter-finals of the European Cup are always especially tricky for the provinces because they come in the slipstreams of the November internationals and the Six Nations. This permits them only one game and one week to ready themselves for European matches after losing the core of their teams for one and two months respectively.

Last year, it is true, Munster's interim Celtic League match against Llanelli before the quarter-finals was postponed because of the condition of the pitch, affording them no run-out before meeting Perpignan. Again, this merely highlights what a good performance it was.

They were also at home. As Lawrence Dallaglio acknowledged afterwards, home advantage is a huge advantage in the quarter-finals. Any less than the merit of Leicester and Llanelli reaching the semi-finals, no one can dispute that Wasps do not remain an excellent cup side, nor that they didn't deserve to comprehensively beat Leinster, but in part their home advantage was down to them having run up 126 points and 20 tries over Treviso in the pool stages.

Northampton, it is true, beat Biarritz in San Sebastian, and no doubt this will support those who claim that moving to a larger less familiar home ground reduces home advantage.

But Biarritz had never lost in three previous knock-out games in the northern Spanish city, and frankly they deserved shooting for beating themselves against a Northampton side incapable of winning their own lineouts, kicking goals or creating openings.

Stade Francais went down with far more honour in their 21-20 defeat in Welford Road than Biarritz, who have blown the most favourable draw any club has ever received in the history of the tournament. In contrast, there was less shame in the defeats of Munster, especially, and Leinster.

Matt Williams once complained, probably with some justification, that Leinster receive a comparatively unfair press, but the nature of the two exits was, alas, true to type. Munster's seven knockout defeats in the last eight years have been by one, one, six, one, five, nine and nine points. Leinster's have been by 11, seven, 16, 24 and 22.

At least Munster kept going, and still fashioned two tremendous tries in the final quarter, even if this made their decision to eschew three three-pointers all the more questionable. Lifeimi Mafi needs to brush up on his defensive work, but after some of the errors he made and pummelling he took, he was still the catalyst for their first try. For the second, he made the support run on to Trevor Halstead's shoulder, drew a man to free Thomas O'Leary, took two hits, stayed on his feet and made a one-handed pick-up. The lad has something.

In part he and Munster were the victim of their curious tactics. Despite their lineout working well, they rarely launched Halstead or the backrowers closer in, whereas on the eight occasions they opted for skip passes to the 13 channel they were either turned over or tackled behind the gain line.

No less than in their mistakes, missed tackles and gradual loss of physical intensity, Leinster's use of the ball was also disappointing given the running talent they have. It's too easy to just blame their pack again and it didn't help that not only is he clearly not 100 per cent free of pain, but Felipe Contepomi is also saddled with the captaincy.

Look through the records and few if any of the great outhalves, invariably place-kickers as well as chief strategists, were ever encumbered with the burdens of captaincy as well. Stephen Jones' performances for Llanelli, where Simon Easterby is the captain, have been in stark contrast to those as captain for Wales, which perhaps reaffirms the point.

Alas, the performances of the English in the European Cup will probably stiffen their resolve in aligning themselves with the French clubs. Serge Blanco makes some very valid points about the bloated international calendar but the shining light of Northern Hemisphere rugby might well die after this season in part because of the rampant egotism of the LNR's president, and because so deep is the profound enmity and suspicion between the RFU and the English clubs that they couldn't agree on a round of tea and biscuits, much less a formula for ERC voting and share rights, or elite player management.

For this, their players, supporters and the rest of Europe must pay. What a shame. What a way to go.