In his weekly column in the Irish Times, Gerry Thornley looks at the qualifiers for next season's Heineken Cup and concludes that it could easily prove the most competitive in the tournament's history.
"Ronan O'Gara would have had mixed feelings as he travelled to Paris on Friday for the evening banquet which celebrated the dream team of the Heineken Cup’s last 15 years, and his own award as the competition’s outstanding player thus far.
"He’d have posed for the photos, shaken hands, accepted the applause and congratulations and mused that he should have been practising his kicking at the Stade de France that day.
"Nothing about the Biarritz performance, for all its remarkable grittiness, would have dispelled the feeling in the minds of O’Gara and his fellow Munstermen that they really should have been there. Leinster could at least console themselves they had only conceded their crown to the eventual four-time winners on their own Toulouse turf, and wonder what might have been had Jonathan Sexton been fit, not to mention Luke Fitzgerald and Seán O’Brien."
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