Munster chief executive Garrett Fitzgerald is confident his province will have two meaningful competitions to play in next season, despite the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the futures of both the Heineken Cup and Celtic League.

The English Rugby Football Union (RFU) is confident European competition can be salvaged for next season, with chief executive Ian Ritchie warning the alternative would be vastly inferior.

The organisers of the Heineken Cup admit it would be “almost unthinkable” for English clubs to pull out of the tournament and form their own breakaway competition.

Irish provinces have been warned they could lose their automatic Heineken Cup qualification spots as the row over the future of the competition rumbles on.

The organisers of the Heineken Cup have expressed their surprise at Premiership Rugby’s decision to negotiate their own TV rights deal, but they are still hopeful some kind of compromise can be struck.

For a full week they looked on, as their disputed dirty linen was aired in public, but the continent’s rugby powerbrokers kept their laundry in-house yesterday after taking the first, tentative steps towards a new accord for the European game’s club tournaments.

After weeks of posturing over the future of the Heineken Cup, European Rugby stakeholders will all meet face to face for the first time in a Dublin hotel today to begin thrashing out a way forward for the continent’s premier club competition.