Saturday’s Grand Final in Edinburgh represented a potentially pivotal moment for rugby’s Guinness Pro12 competition.

After a decade that had seen its steady development since inception as the Celtic League there had been clear signs of decline more recently.

Its growth out of the vehicle of necessity that was the Welsh-Scottish League, which helped our professional rugby limp around the shift into the new millennium, had more than coincided with a boom period for the Celtic game as what would become the Irish powerhouse entered the fray.

Seven Six Nations titles, four of them with Grand Slams between 2005 and 2015 shared by Wales and Ireland and, more tellingly, five European Cup wins by Munster and Leinster in a seven season spell between 2006 and 2012 spoke to the way in which the intelligent use of domestic competition to maximise resources for the more prestigious tournaments, were evidence that even as it evolved from Celtic League into Pro12 it was serving its purpose magnificently.

With the introduction of the Italian teams and a play-off system which meant that player welfare could be maintained through the season but that one of the best teams would still emerge as champions, the competitive and commercial potential of the Pro12 was growing as it fed off the success in those major tournaments.

Their dominance in the Six Nations and what was then the Heineken Cup was, however, a constant source of embarrassment to the much more heavily resourced English and French clubs and, unable to beat them on the pitch, they took to the negotiating table and won, forcing the Pro12 to fall into line with their preferred attritional model of having to fight for points throughout the season, at whatever cost.

Little wonder that Leinster’s head coach Leo Cullen spoke on Saturday evening of having had to use 56 players this season, while his Connacht counterpart Pat Lam used 46, something closer to American Football rosters than rugby club squads.

This season had brought the most compelling evidence yet of the damage done. The World Cup in England was rugby’s greatest tournament to date, but it showed where European rugby currently stands in world terms as, for the first time ever, not a single Northern Hemisphere side made it into the semi-finals.

Consider then what that said about Pro12 rugby when, for the first time ever, later in the same season, not a single Celtic team made it into the knockout stages of the European Champions Cup.

Against that background the decision to copy others once again by deciding the venue for the Grand Final long in advance, looked like a hostage to fortune, all the more so when the decision was made to go to the Scottish capital.

A 67,500 capacity stadium represented a guarantee that even had Glasgow Warriors repeated the feat of the previous two years by reaching the final, there would have been row upon row of empty seats and so it proved, with the stadium barely half full.

Once the finalists were known Ireland’s leading rugby writer Gerry Thornley wrote articles which were scathing in their criticism of that venue choice and he told me on Saturday that he has not had such a huge mailbag of supportive messages in a long time.

His Welsh counterpart, Simon Thomas of the Western Mail, a prolific Twitter user, meanwhile pursued a related theme as, in the absence of their teams’ involvement, he opted to make the shorter trip from Cardiff to Twickenham for the English Premiership final.

In a succession of messages posted on the social media forum he observed:

“What an occasion this is going to be at Twickenham today. Super support. Should be a great game.”

“The last update I had was that around 35,000 tickets have been sold for today’s @Pro12rugby final between Connacht and Leinster in Edinburgh.”

“The attendance at Twickenham for today’s @premrugby final is 76,109. Superb turn-out, great occasion and a deserved 28-20 win for Saracens.”

In related conversations with other Tweeters he observed of the Pro12 finale: “I will watch it because they are two fine sides, but I will be in the minority in Wales,” and: “We have not had one complaint from our readers about not covering the final.”

Simon is a very reasonable man who is passionate about all aspects of Welsh rugby and he put up plenty of supportive messages about the Pro12 final too, but it seemed impossible to misread the point being made.

Yet, in the end, the Pro12 organisers just about got away with it.

A combination of a glorious afternoon and a wondrous performance from what was for many years the tournament’s most unloved team.

There was a huge lesson for all concerned, too, in the style with which they played.

With the fewest international players of any team in the competition coach Pat Lam has introduced a playing style, wholly borrowed from Super Rugby, that is both a delight on the eye and proof that with persistence and determination Celtic players have the skill levels to play the type of game that has set the Southern Hemisphere apart.

The sunshine meanwhile meant just enough neutrals turned up to generate some sense of occasion – largely because of the more appropriate size of previous venues they could even claim a record attendance for a Grand Final - and the passion of the Connacht supporters, backed by the goodwill of all others, including their Leinster cousins, meanwhile showed rugby’s virtues at their best.

It was, in the end, a day which offered the latest proof that the Pro12 must have the confidence to do things in a way that suits Celts and Italians, rather than kow-towing to structures imposed on them by others.