Peter Jackson: Six Irish ‘ambassadors’ remain in Champions Cup as Pro12 teams are creamed

House-to-house inquiries across the rugby centres of Europe have revealed a disturbing fact. As of late last night, only six Irish survivors were left in the Champions’ Cup.

They will not take much accounting — one director of rugby (Mark McCall at Saracens), two coaches (Ronan O’Gara at Racing, Geordan Murphy at Leicester), one player (JJ Hanrahan at Northampton), another as yet unable to make a bow (Paul O’Connell at Toulon) and a club owner, Derek Richardson, who has Wasps abuzz as never before.

The seven fat years, from Munster’s double to Leinster’s treble, lasted longer than anyone dared reasonably hope. The biblical analogy decreed that it would end one day but nobody can have imagined it would come to this.