Anthony Foley drives Munster on to sign off with vital victory

with high stakes in every game and tension etched across head coaches’ brows from Galway to Parma ahead of today’s 22nd and final round of the Guinness Pro12 league campaign, you would wonder why the men in suits had to be dragged kicking and screaming into a brave new word of meritocracy.

Six venues across Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy will this afternoon ooh and aah, swing and sway, and ultimately be left laughing or crying as the regular season reaches its conclusion and matters are finally settled in scenarios that are as wide open as when the league got up and running back on September 4.

Seven months on and little is decided. No definitive table topper, no settled quartet of play-off semi-finalists, nor even a top six of qualifiers for next season’s Champions Cup. Even the right to represent Italy in the competition remains on a knife-edge as bottom club Zebre host the Newport Gwent Dragons in Parma while Treviso, a point ahead of their compatriots in 11th, travel to Dublin to face a Leinster side chasing second place.