Although having a regulation look to it, the coming season will throw up some real gems, writes Gerry Thornley

SCHOOL’S BACK and, while it hasn’t exactly been factor-10 weather of late, so, too, is autumn and the rugby season. With no World Cup or Lions tour, the nine months ahead has a regulation look to it as well, with pretty much everything in its customary place. Perhaps, at long last, the professional game has settled into some kind of structure, although there are some alterations from previous years.

All told, it promises to be a fairly familiar and uncluttered itinerary, what with the Anglo-Welsh Cup – heretofore a square peg in a round hole – effectively becoming a developmental competition to be run off on Six Nations’ weekends.

The net result is that Magners League weekends will be just that, full rounds of five matches, and so Welsh teams ought not to be building a backlog of matches.

Furthermore, this affords the league the opportunity to belatedly introduce the concept of top-four play-offs – a concept that had been held up, to all intents and purposes, by Welsh participation in the EDF Cup.

The ripple effect of the Lions tour will still be felt, as all of Ireland’s Lions are being kept in cotton wool for the time being, and the provinces expect that with the advent of play-offs, they will see less of their front-liners this season.

Irish rugby has everything to lose but everything to retain in the 2009-10 season, for the league is the first of five international or cross-border trophies to be defended in the coming campaign after last season’s remarkable clean sweep.

Reigning European champions Leinster begin their defence of the Heineken Cup at home to London Irish on Friday, October 9th, one of three Anglo-Irish affairs on the opening weekend – Ulster host Bath the same evening and Munster are away to Northampton the next day in a repeat of the 2000 decider.

In what is scheduled to be the last season Irish rugby will pitch up tent in Croke Park, Ireland’s Grand Slammers host Australia on Jones’s Road in the first of 10 Tests this season on Sunday, November 15th.

Samoa offers Declan Kidney and his Brains Trust the most obvious opportunity to rotate the squad six days later before the world champions and Tri-Nations champions elect, South Africa, play at Croke Park on November 28th.

This will be one of the season’s more eagerly awaited affairs given the fall-out from the Lions’ tour – all the better therefore if Pieter de Villiers’ Springboks also arrive as reigning Southern Hemisphere kingpins as well.

Kidney’s team begin the defence of their Six Nations at home to Italy in the opening match of the tournament on February 6th. But a measure of the task facing them this season is that Ireland then face slightly daunting back-to-back matches against France and England (the first of their Triple Crown matches).

The last time Ireland won in London and Paris in the same year was 1972, since when they have lost on 18 of their subsequent 19 visits to the French capital; and the last time prior to ’72 when they completed this away double was in the Slam year of 1948.

All of Ireland’s games are on Saturdays, although this season’s RBS Six Nations features another Friday night under lights for the benefit of television – Wales v France at the Millennium Stadium in round three – as well as Sunday games before so-called “Super Saturday” on March 20th. On that day, Ireland finish their campaign against Scotland at Croke Park before what the organisers and BBC will no doubt hope is the grand denouement between France and England in Paris that night.

Ireland’s end-of-season tour encompasses Tests against the All Blacks and Australia, in venues to be arranged, although a fortnight apart – so they are likely to look for provincial opposition in the intervening Saturday, most likely against New Zealand opposition.

It is not certain whether Ireland will defend their Churchill Cup title, as their three-year participation agreement has been completed and the New Zealand Maoris are expected to return to the competition, but if, as anticipated, it is held in England, then one imagines Ireland will be invited to do so.

The coming season also sees the advent of the British and Irish Cup, in which the provincial A sides will compete against club sides from Scotland and the English first division, as well as a revamped AIB League.

Last season’s top eight clubs have qualified for Division 1A, where they will play each other home and away before the top three advance to the semi-finals, where they will be joined by the winners of Division 1B.

Alas, the upper tier is an exclusively Munster/Leinster affair, thereby ensuring 20 Munster derbies, another 30 Munster-Leinster games, and six Leinster derbies and so denuding the division of a truly All-Ireland aspect.

That said, the eight-way clamour across all four provinces for the top spot in Division 1B could be even more compelling, as will the heightened desire to join them from Division Two.