The greatest game in Heineken Cup history?

FOR all bar a handful of English fans among the 48,000 at a sold-out Lansdowne Road, it ended in the heartache caused by a tubby Samoan burrowing over for the decisive try four minutes into stoppage time.

To add irony to injury, Munster had been undone that day by a sub-plot swirling around a sacked Ireland coach.

Back then, on the last April weekend of 2004, Warren Gatland felt a burning sense of injustice at his dismissal by the kingmakers of the Irish Rugby Union. Lawrence Dallaglio, never slow to turn any slight into a motivational force, worked his Wasps team into such a lather that their dressing-room door needed some urgent carpentry work.