Common sense prevails at last

The dust having settled on the Murrayfield disaster, the post-mortems having been conducted, it's probably as well that the Irish management have had an additional week before deciding on the squad to play Italy on Saturday week in Lansdowne Road.

They will convene tomorrow afternoon to decide on a 22-man squad for that test, as well as the composition of the starting XV and replacements for the `A' encounter on Friday week, both of which will be announced on Thursday.

With a couple of changes already forced on the management due to the injuries to David Humphreys and Eric Miller, there is unlikely to be a kneejerk reaction to the defeat against Scotland; with perhaps no more than another couple of changes and those coming from within a largely unaltered squad.

Paul Wallace, who laboured through another outing for Saracens in their televised defeat to Bath on Sunday, will probably be granted a rest on Saturday week. Justin Fitzpatrick seems set for a promotion from the replacements, with Peter Clohessy reverting to tight-head.

Along with Wallace, the other likeliest casualties from Murrayfield are the off-colour Andy Ward, Conor McGuinness and Jonathan Bell. Ward might be looked at as a number six, or alternatively could miss out to a back-row comprising of Trevor Brennan, Victor Costello and Dion O'Cuinneagain, whose slight hamstring tear didn't prevent him making a try-scoring appearance for Sale at the weekend.

The scrum-halves are liable to remain the same, with Ciaran Scally ultimately winning promotion to the starting line-up against Italy. Philip Danaher's presence at Sydney Parade on Saturday strongly hints at a promotion of some sorts for Scally's UCD team-mate Brian O'Driscoll, whose out-half cum centre versatility may even mean inclusion in the test squad given Jeremy Staunton may understandably be regarded as a little too raw for a place in the test squad. Promotion to the `A' team, and inclusion on the Australian tour would make sense though.

Jonathan Bell's nightmare in Murrayfield and absence from Dungannon's last two starts may mean promotion to the test squad for Shane Horgan.

Thus, with the test squad unlikely to show more than three or four new faces, the make-up of the A team and replacements will contain more surprises and talking points. With one eye firmly focused on the Australian tour, all manner of new faces and new names could come into the A setup, including additional Irish-qualified players from abroad.

Away from the field, it was a surprisingly heartening weekend for rugby; perhaps the most progressive amongst the warring factions in the Northern Hemisphere since the game turned professional. On foot of the English clubs' brinkmanship of the last year, and the tacit support of Twickenham, an unofficial and unholy Anglo-French alliance was cobbled together last month outlining their proposals for a revamped European Cup.

Effectively, it seemed designed to give the English and French clubs control of the tournament, and, disappointingly, was presented as a fait accompli by the normally conciliatory Serge Blanco. The accord would have granted the English and French clubs a 60 per cent controlling interest in the competition, complete with the power to negotiate broadcasting rights, sponsorship and scheduling of matches.

Yet from that unpromising scenario, a compromise agreement was reached between all vested interests on Saturday whereby the English Eurosceptics have returned to the European Cup and an eight-year deal securing the competition's future was secured.

ERC will continue to organise and run the competition; a full-time chief executive independent of the Five Nations Committee will be appointed; the English clubs will withdraw their EC application challenging the regulations and control of the International Rugby Board and a format for next season's tournament and beyond has been established.

The turning point appears to have been a meeting of the English RFU council last Friday week, at which the attendant Bill Beaumont and Fran Cotton successfully proposed that England had to be represented in the European Cup, be it through their leading clubs or sides cobbled together from the lower leagues if needs be.

AT a stroke, if somewhat belatedly, the RFU finally stood up to their clubs and gave them some of their own medicine. Given a week to chew over the prospect of biting off one of the most lucrative hands that could feed them, the English clubs saw sense.

Friday's meeting in a Paris hotel, scheduled to last for an hour and a half, took six hours, and the outcome must in part be interpreted as a success for the English clubs' most vilified opponents of the last year, Vernon Pugh and the unwavering ERC chairman Tom Kiernan.

Granted, the French and English have negotiated a larger slice of the voting and financial cake, with each garnering 27.8 per cent ownership rights; leaving Wales with 16.68 per cent, Ireland and Scotland 11.12 per cent each, and Italy 5.6 per cent.

The French and English will also have the most numerous participants next season, six clubs each, with Wales having five (why, pray tell?), Ireland three, and Scotland and Italy two apiece. The Cup will be whittled down to 20 teams within a year, containing a minimum number of two clubs per nation and a maximum of six.

France and England will then be guaranteed four each, with the rest ensured of two representatives each. The remaining four places will go to the countries who provide next season's semi-finalists. In other words, if Ireland are to retain a third place, they must provide at least one of the semi-finalists.

Even so, a third place next season for the Irish provinces is a welcome boost after it was initially feared Ireland's participation would be reduced from three to two.

The boon for this season's Allied Dunbar run-in alone is massive with the top nine in the English Premiership all having something tangible to play for. London Irish's European hopes look like going down to the wire. With just three games left of their own, theoretically the four clubs immediately below Irish could overtake them by winning their games in hand.

Although their Irishness has been heavily diluted - only three Irish players played in Saturday's win - imagine a European Cup, Friday night in Donnybrook, Ravenhill or Thomond Park with London Irish as the visitors? Such fanciful thoughts are now feasible again. European Rugby has a competition to underpin the Northern Hemisphere game until 2007. Common sense has prevailed.

Harmony and peace in our times. Amazing.