Provincial game taking a lot more than it’s giving

Quick. Off the top of your head: which is the bigger game? Munster v Leinster tomorrow in the RaboDirect PRO12 at Thomond Park or Ireland’s November Series opener against Samoa at the Aviva Stadium.

Chances are you plumped for the interpro derby. Right? Well, if you did, you are wrong. Very, very wrong.

That isn’t to say Munster-Leinster won’t be a better occasion or it doesn’t mean more to a good wedge of rugby fans in those two regions. It probably will be and probably does and yet for the good men and women beavering away at the IRFU’s head office in Ballsbridge it is a glittering sideshow to the main business at hand.