AS ALWAYS with the Heineken Cup, the cream tends to rise to the top when the knockout stages come calling in April.

WITH the likelihood of another passionate full house at Thomond Park on Saturday night, it promises to be another great Munster-Leinster occasion, even if there is every possibility that the two sides will meet again in the knockout stages of the Magners League.

THE 12th season of the RBS 6 Nations championship will not linger long in the memory, with even winners England left feeling flat after leaving Dublin with the championship trophy on board but their reputations bruised.

IN A tournament devoid of any classic encounter to date, last weekend’s penultimate round of Six Nations Championship provided more incident and controversy than the previous three rounds together.

The Tactics

THE similarities between Wales and Ireland in terms of performance and results in this year’s Six Nations are quite startling and suggest there is little to separate the sides ahead of Saturday’s clash in Cardiff.

AS ALL the teams in this year’s Six Nations prepare to negotiate the home straight, my over-riding feeling is that it has been a very strange tournament for Ireland.

FOR all the management teams, the Six Nations has now become a three-phase operation, with the key objective to be still in contention for honours when the final round of games are staged.

IT’S the same every year. We loseto France and immediately the reaction seems to be — “and they are not even a great French team”.