ON RUGBY:For three Irish provinces, the season continues until next weekend, and for Connacht, there will be acute interest in events at the Millennium Stadium on Saturday week, writes GERRY THORNLEY

LET’S HEAR it for the play-offs again. Next weekend’s semi-finals will ensure a fitting sense of climax to the Celtic campaign and, when you think of it, it’s remarkable the Magners League only grasped the concept of play-offs as recently as last season. What took them so long?

For sure, Munster finished 13 points clear of the rest, and there’s an old-school argument that they should be the champions – as Leinster ought to have been 12 months ago after finishing top (a point ahead of eventual winners the Ospreys). But finishing first still earns the added advantage of a home semi-final as well as the knowledge victory would ensure a home final as well.

As with second over third the difference between a semi-final at the RDS or Ravenhill this Friday, there’s plenty of incentive to achieve the highest place possible and, if a team can’t make home advantage tell in the semi-final or final – as Leinster failed to do a year ago – then so be it. It’s not entirely fair, but them’s the rules, and, besides, it’s not strictly a level playing field during the 22-game programme given so many matches are shoe-horned into the November and Six Nations windows, leaving coaches unable to pick from a full deck.

More to the point, it ensures a far better finale than, say, two years ago when Munster were declared league champions two nights before facing Leinster in that seismic Heineken Cup semi-final at Croke Park due to the Ospreys’ failure to obtain a bonus-point win against the Dragons in a rearranged Thursday night game at the Liberty Stadium. Talk about an anti-climax. Sponsors, television and supporters deserve a better showcase decider than that.

Now, alas, Magners are bailing out, as it were, at the end of this their fifth season, in which time the tournament has at last grown significantly. Television figures have risen to more than 500,000 per round from 300,000 last year (and thus reached a cumulative 18 million), and with a 25 per cent increase in attendances, more than one million fans came through the turnstiles for the first time in the tournament’s history.

The departure of Magners only makes the three knock-out games more important in showcasing the league. Celtic Rugby are fairly confident they can entice a sponsor from a financial institution akin to the deal they had with Magners/Bulmers and the play-offs oughtn’t to harm that process. The semi-finals have thrown up two enticing affairs, with a little element of grudge in both. Munster and the Ospreys are meeting for the fifth time this season, (and 10th time in three seasons). And as the recent Clasicos have demonstrated, familiarity breeds contempt and all that.

Similarly, a core of the Munster and Ospreys squads were team-mates on the Lions tour, along with their Leinster brethren. When Munster meet the Ospreys on Saturday evening, even if Lee Byrne and Shane Williams are sidelined with knee injuries, there should be about 10 Lions and four All Blacks in the match-day 23s. In last year’s final between Leinster and the Ospreys, of the 24 Irish and Welsh internationals in the starting line-ups, 15 were Lions.

Furthermore, of course, this season’s semi-final line-up features two teams who have won three of the last five Heineken Cups, as well as one of this season’s finalists. As further vindication of the league’s credentials, one could scan across the final regular-season tables in the Premiership and Top 14 yesterday, and note Leinster have beaten the first and second-placed finishers in England and the first, second and fourth in France.

The move to terrestrial television has probably helped the league penetrate the public’s consciousness, even if the scattering of matches across so many channels means it doesn’t have anything like Sky’s slick packaging of the Premiership. But in truth, allowing for wildly varying refereeing standards, the product is every bit as good, especially when sides meet full on.

Granted, the heavyweights can perhaps more readily focus on Europe, and the expansion of the league to 12 teams, with an additional four matches having to be accommodated in international windows, has meant coaches have had to delve deeper into squads, with Leinster and Munster each having used 50 players in this campaign.

Younger players, such as Ian Nagle, Simon Zebo, Danny Barnes, Conor Murray, Dominic Ryan, Eoin O’Malley, Niall Morris, Nevin Spence, Conor Gilroy, Paddy McAllister and a host of others, in Wales and less so Scotland, have been given game time they wouldn’t otherwise have had and have become the talk of the league as much as the stellar names. Next season’s league, with the first two months taking place during the World Cup, may or may not tell a different tale.

The expansion of the league has not noticeably weakened the hands of the Irish provinces. Indeed, as the Ireland management will no doubt be keen to stress, the indigenous playing base at provincial level has been increased, while Munster, Leinster and Ulster still sit prettily in positions one, two and three.

Thus, remarkably, the May 29th final is guaranteed to take place in Ireland. The demarcation lines could scarcely be clearer, as next in the table come the four Welsh teams, followed in turn by an amalgamation of the Scots, Italians and Connacht.

Thus, for three of the four provinces, the season continues until next weekend, and for the fourth, Connacht, there will also be acute interest in events at the Millennium Stadium on Saturday week, as victory for Leinster in the Heineken Cup final over Northampton would earn Connacht a place in the premier European competition for the first time.

Connacht need feel no shame about this back-door route. Cardiff winning the Challenge Cup last season is how the Dragons qualified again for the Heineken Cup this season, and Biarritz squeezed in as the seventh French side by dint of losing to Toulouse in the Heineken Cup final.

Besides, this has arguably been Connacht’s best league campaign. They have won more matches, accumulated more points, had three bonus-point wins (compared to none last season), scored a dozen more tries, conceded 10 less and their points difference of -65 compares to -204 last season. Fionn Carr, Seán Cronin, Jamie Hagan and Ian Keatley are all better players for their time with Connacht too; the pity is they’re all leaving as Connacht perhaps embark upon what could be an historic season.

PS: Isa Nacewa was back in the Burlington Hotel scooping another award four nights after his Irupa Player of the Year when winning Leinster’s Player of the Year on Saturday night, and special mention has to go to Newpark Comprehensive (and the Leinster Branch) for its Special Merit School award on foot of them winning the Section A League for the second year in a row, the Vinnie Murray Plate and the McMullen Cup this year.