Sporting rivalries: Swings and roundabouts

Leinster and Munster have met just over a hundred times since the Second World War and the Blues have won just five games more than the Reds in all that time

RIVALRY RESUMED: Leinster's Ryan Baird and Fineen Wycherley of Munster compete for a line-out. ©INPHO/Laszlo Geczo

Most of sport’s best rivalries ebb and flow. Teams will always have their periods of dominance but the shared gravity and mutual dislike that binds them tend to act as an elastic that allows one pull only so far ahead before rebounding back into the other’s orbit.

When that band breaks the rivalry can snap with it.