Leinster's domination of European rugby in the last four years inevitably leads to the question as to whether they can now be considered to be the strongest club or provincial side in the world.
How good would it be to find out with a match between them and the ultimate winners of the southern hemisphere's Super 15?
The rescheduling of the Super 15 into a season-long tournament would certainly make it much harder to find a suitable date for the fixture than in the past, when the Heineken Cup and Super 12 finals took place on the same weekend.
However, as the RaboDirect Pro12 looks to assert its undeniable status as Europe's pre-eminent domestic tournament, what better way to kick off next season than for the sponsors to invite the Super 15 winners to the Aviva Stadium to meet the Heineken Cup and, perhaps, Pro12 champions?
Whether or not organisers have the gumption to set up that challenge match, it is vital that they seize upon this current window of opportunity to highlight the institutional anti-Celtic sentiment of major London-based broadcasters, newspapers and sponsors.
The make-up of the squads for Saturday's Aviva Premiership and Sunday's Pro12 finals suggest that is not a situation that is about to change any time soon.
Leinster's team may boast Rob Kearney, this season's European player of the year, Sean O'Brien, his immediate predecessor, Brian O'Driscoll, probably the greatest Irish player of all-time, and the sublime Jonny Sexton, not to mention Jamie Heaslip, Gordon D'Arcy and Cian Healy.
The best-known player in Leicester's ranks will, meanwhile, be Geordan Murphy, their former Ireland colleague who might unkindly be described as an international has-been.
The Ospreys team also bristles with talent. Shane Williams is at the same stage of his career as Murphy, but likely to start his final competitive match alongside his stunningly quick fellow wing Hanno Dirksen, while forward power is supplied by the Jones boys Adam, Alan Wyn and Ryan, as well as Justin Tipuric.
Harlequins are led by an exceptional individual in England captain Chris Robshaw but, as a collective force, we were given insight into the relative quality of the two competitions when they lost to the fourth best of Ireland's provinces, Connacht, in the Heineken Cup in Galway in a match where the English side had more at stake.
Even so, current superiority is such that Celtic administrators should be taking every opportunity to raise the issue as to why the big backers, even those with Celtic roots, continue to give greater support to an English competition than a superior one involving the other three "nations" that comprise the United Kingdom.
It is, for example, hard to imagine New Zealand's most iconic beer brand, Steinlager, neglecting Kiwi rugby in favour of Australian teams and competitions, as Guinness did not that long ago when it sponsored England's Premiership.
It is the way the English competition continues to be promoted that allows its propagandists to continue their efforts to ensure greater English involvement in the Heineken Cup at the expense of Celtic teams, in defiance of all statistical evidence.
To that end, I would recommend a look at the current rankings – not those on the European Rugby Cups (ERC) website, since their points system is ridiculously basic; it rewards performances four years ago as much as those of the season gone by – but on the much more sophisticated eurorugby.com site. They, too, still fail to reflect fully the current standing, but the history of how their table has evolved explains that. It was set up in the year 2000 when there was no Celtic League and, just as when golf's Sony World Rankings were established in the mid-1980s, they had to make some initial judgment calls.
In the case of the golf rankings, that, quite rightly, meant players based on the US Tour were, for the most part, ranked higher than those on the European Tour from the outset. It consequently took a great deal of time and widespread infiltration of US events by European players to get to the situation we have now where, more than a quarter of a century on, European players lead the world rankings.
While eurorugby did place Munster at the top of their rankings in August 2000 on the basis of Heineken Cup performances, the Irish province was the only Celtic team in the top 12.
Since then, a much more scientific approach has become available with factors affecting ranking being: points scored and conceded; whether games are played at home or away; strength of opposition; strength of domestic league; importance of the game; and recent form.
As with the golf rankings, the original placings meant there was a self-perpetuating element which kept the English and French clubs in inflated positions but, in spite of that, a dozen years later, Leinster lead the way – inevitably – with three other Celtic teams, including Glasgow Warriors, in the top 12. The average placing for the 10 Celtic teams in the rankings is better than 17th. The average placing for the 12 teams from the Aviva Premiership is 22nd.
With the vast Irish, Welsh and Scottish diasporas, as well as the fast-growing Italian market, to be tapped through the Pro12, perhaps this offers us an opportunity to consider very seriously how the big British institutions are playing their part in promoting English mediocrity while keeping down the arguably world-leading Celts.
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