“I’m going to miss this place,” said Stander, looking round at the empty Thomond Park stands through watery eyes. Not as much as they are going to miss him

Had Hollywood’s most creative minds colluded in dreaming up an identical narrative, the script would have been shredded as too far-fetched, even for a work of fiction, never mind for real

A Grand Slam winner earns an extra 1% bonus, worth more than €1m as stumped up by the five other countries.

Nobody had seen as much smoke billowing out of Martin Johnson’s cauliflowered ears since England drove him into a state of near volcanic eruption at Croke Park in 2009.

On a routine Monday at Dublin Airport as a dejected Wales team shuffled through security, fans from the fanatical fringe of the Red Dragon Brotherhood greeted them with a spontaneous sound. They burst into a song, not of praise but damnation.

Thirteen unanswered points suggested they could take a red card on the chin and still win, as they had done despite CJ Stander’s against the Springboks in Cape Town five years ago

Munster didn’t merely win the apparently un-winnable; they won it, to borrow a bit of racing parlance, going away

Weekend takeaways from the European Champions Cup

Over the last 10 years pre-Covid, three clubs monopolised the Heineken Champions’ Cup: Leinster, Saracens, Toulon

Had he been in a different place at a different time, Johnny Sexton’s glaring strop over his premature exit in Paris would probably have cost him the captaincy