The success of Magners League sides is the envy of the English league according to The Independent's Chris Hewett.
"The number of close games in the Guinness Premiership is greater than in any of the world's other major leagues: far greater, according to recent statistics compiled by the people who run the tournament. Winning margins are smaller, points are harder to score, tries are significantly more difficult to come by and crowds, seduced by the brutal competitiveness of it all, are on the increase, to the extent that gates in top-flight English rugby are fast closing in on Super 14 levels, much to the puzzlement of the southern hemisphere supremacists who consider rugby in this neck of the woods to border on the medieval.
So everything in the garden is rosy, right? Wrong. For the first time since they first banded together in 2001, the Celts are the ones ahead of the game in these islands. There is now clear blue water between the Magners League and the Premiership, and the evidence is to be found in the one competition that involves everyone: the Heineken Cup. When the quarter-finals are played this weekend – the most eagerly-awaited weekend of the season for the union connoisseur – three Celtic sides, two Irish and one Welsh, will be involved. The English? They have Northampton, and no-one else. It is the country's worst performance in Europe since 1999, when, because of a mass boycott, they failed to perform at all."
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