Leinster facing busy schedule

The Irish trio began their European Cup campaigns in unbeaten mode, which is at least more than the poor Welsh, Scots or Italians could claim, who could muster only one win between them.

No garlands then, but no bouquets of barbed wire either.

After all, bearing in mind their prolonged build-ups, all three Irish provinces should have been able to hit the ground running and all three pool openers had to be targeted as winnable ones.

That's if they are to progress through to the knock-out stages, which must be considered a realistic goal for all of them.

The French look to be out on their own, only Begles/Bordeaux of their five representatives going down and that because they had the misfortune to be playing French champions Stade Francais.

With Toulouse ominously rewriting the record books against Ebbw Vale and only one of their 10 Shield representatives losing to a nonFrench side, it's clear that the French are taking both competitions deadly seriously. Which is, er, great.

As it happens, Begles' defeat to Stade Francais looks like a good result for Leinster. Given next Friday night's visitors to Donnybrook are probably the best club side in Europe, Leinster are probably best served by Stade Francais beating the rest in Pool A, thereby preventing Begles or Llanelli picking up any points which will probably be beyond Leinster.

Mike Ruddock's burgeoning young side can now afford to give it a lash in time-honoured tradition next Friday, comforted in the knowledge that their win in Stradey Park leaves them best placed to secure the pool runners-up slot at this formative stage.

By contrast, the meeting of Llanelli and Begles will leave either team pointless after two games, which would be particularly disastrous for Llanelli given they will have played both matches at home. Alternatively, a second defeat for Begles would leave Leinster poised to effectively end their interest in the competition at Donnybrook on October 9th.

With Munster due to visit Donnybrook on October 23rd in a potential interprovincial decider and Llanelli due in the pool finale on November 6th, the venue increasingly looks the place to be on four of the next six Fridays. Indeed, the team's progress and the Leinster Branch's excellent presentation and marketing of Friday night games at Donnybrook, make these occasions second only to international match weekends.

By comparison to the Irish trio, only Pontypridd of the Welsh quartet won last weekend. Aside from Llanelli, Neath went down at home to Perpignan and Ebbw Vale now possess the dual record of heaviest defeat in the European Cup (108-16 away to Toulouse) as well as their European Shield landmark defeat by 93-7 at Agen two years ago.

Neither Scottish side won and both Italian sides went down. Even though Munster's laborious 20-13 win over Padova didn't augur particularly well, next week's visit of Neath to Cork offers them a chance to pull four points clear of the Welshmen and Padova alongside Perpignan.

Nonetheless, they're probably going to have to play a good deal better. Neath pluckily gave Perpignan a run for their money until the latter's five second-half tries and while Perpignan's visit to Thomond Park on the 20th anniversary of the famous win over the All Blacks offers Munster a better chance from that fixture, realistically they'll need to be targeting the home and away fixtures with both Neath and Padova.

Taken together the Irish performances were actually a little on the disappointing side, and certainly Ulster should be kicking themselves for dropping potentially a very costly point at home to Edinburgh Reivers in Friday's extraordinary 38-38 draw.

They allowed themselves to become embroiled in a Super 12-type game of pyjama rugby, which was fine when they had the ball but without it their first-up tackling was poor. The net result was that they had to work far harder for their four tries that the Reivers did for theirs.

Off the pitch, the main talking point of the weekend was the meeting between IRFU chiefs and representatives from the first division clubs on Sunday morning in Dublin. Billy Lavery, Eddie Wigglesworth and Noel Murphy gave a state of the nation address in which, by all accounts, the latter gave a vintage performance.

Given his Cork Con roots, the clubs can have little doubt that Murphy is keen to maintain the ever more difficult balancing act between the club, provincial and international games. But this will prove especially acute next season when seven Saturdays will be lost due to the World Cup in October and the ban on any of the players involved in the finals from playing competitively throughout September.

This will mean the interprovincials starting in August and the balancing act will assume trapeze-like proportions if the British League comes into being. Murphy admits that the Union have to be represented at such talks with a view to securing places at the table for the Irish provinces.

The clubs are concerned about their ever-decreasing slots in the season but as Murphy informed them, both they and the provinces will have to resign themselves to playing games without their international players next season. Given the Irish international team, especially in World Cup year, has to supercede all other interests, that's only right and proper.

Ultimately too, the clubs will have to accept the principle of playing AIL games without their international players, perhaps even playing games on the Friday nights or Sundays of international weekends. Were they to incorporate this concession with proposals for a longer AIL programme, it might even be the saving of them and the AIL.

With a reasonable degree of progressive and unified thinking, there's plenty that could be done with the AIL. But far from being progressive the clubs are usually playing the poor mouth while being reactionary (remember, they even delayed the onset of the AIL). As for unified action, they give the impression they couldn't agree on a round of drinks.