Goodbye to all that then. For all bar Connacht, the European campaigns are over and so the Leinster, Ulster and Munster players have the delights of local development leagues and preparing for the AIL. I would venture that, to a man, no Euro squadie is this morning jumping out of bed, pulling back the curtains and shouting "Yippee, roll on the club campaigns". They don't want it.

At least two disenchanted, part-time provincial players are considering going abroad, even to a second division English club. Of course, none of them will say this in public, for fear of upsetting their clubs or team-mates. Yet those same teammates, were they in the same position, would be feeling the exact same sense of acute anti-climax this morning.

Since June, or in some cases July, the top 2530 players in each of the aforementioned three provinces have been preparing and playing at an increasingly higher standard. They have been exposed to professional or semi-professional coaching set-ups, and to a completely different level of play - in different environments, against different opposition and even officiated by different referees. Some players have improved rapidly as a result.

It's interesting to note who the successes have been. With the playing field shifted on to a new level, previously unsung players have come through. Take Leinster, where the primary success stories have probably been four players who had not been exposed to this level. Along with Trevor Brennan, John McWeeney (now a real contender for the Irish set-up against the All Blacks after playing as many European Cup games as he has senior games with St Mary's), Reggie Corrigan and Kevin Nowlan, it would also be fair to say that Victor Costello has put together his most consistent spell of form of his career thus far.

Yet they, and about 70 other players, must now return to a club structure of far poorer standard. If it's true to say that a league is only as good as its weakest club, then it may also be true to say that a squad is only as good as its weakest player.

It's going to be hard for some of these guys to adjust, and this also has significant implications for Brian Ashton and the Irish set-up. For the local-based players, their graph will have steadily risen over the last nine weeks, only to drop considerably between now and February. A select few will have only three internationals to raise the standard again in time.

This will not apply to those players based in England, where most are holding their places in first teams with clubs where nearly all the participants are representative players of one sort or another.

As long as the current structure exists then, the trend toward Irish teams made up of England-based players will continue - as will the exodus of players across the sea, if more of a trickle now than the flood of two years ago.

There are ways of addressing these problems, and the key to it is a radically altered structure. As in everything in the modern game, we should not be hostages to tradition.

The interpros were moved to August this season, and while they proved useful for preparing Ireland's European entrants, they were a commercial and entertainment failure. Instead, they could be run off somewhere in this next stage of the season.

Imagine the interest which the European campaigns would have generated were the interpros to start now? Imagine the interest in Galway for a Connacht-Leinster rematch, or the appeal Connacht would now hold in Munster or Ulster?

Indeed, why not go further and make it a six series, home and away interprovincial series? It would be a more viable marketing entity. Television coverage could be incorporated. So much could be done with it.

Instead, the provincial coaches and players have gone into a kind of limbo, which one or two monthly squad sessions, allied to the occasional developmental game, cannot adequately fill.

It would also be far better and more appropriate to begin the qualifying campaign for next season's European Cup now, after this year's pool stages rather than before it. With each province meeting the other twice, and each therefore guaranteed the same number of home and away matches, it would be far more equitable. A six-series interpro set-up would also serve as match practice for those sides who reached the play-offs. No one quite seems to have bargained for this, yet that is what Irish rugby should be aiming for. As it is, Connacht are left to scratch around looking for a friendly or two prior to their conference quarter-final next month.

Meantime, one wonders what would have happened to the league clubs whose players would have been engaged by their provinces had more of them reached the knock-out stages? Would the players have suddenly started serving two masters simultaneously?

All of this admittedly raises the questions: how to prepare the provinces for the Euro campaigns in August, and what to do with the clubs? Again, there are options, and remember, we should never be hostages to tradition.

For starters, in the absence of the sporadically mooted Celtic Cup, the four Irish provinces could get together with the four Scottish districts for three or four weeks of matches. It may not be the most stimulating competition in the world for the rugby public, but it would still serve as valuable preparation.

The league could either be run-off sometime in the New Year, or (and I can hear the traditionalists shriek already) be played in the summer. Watching rugby in late summer or autumn, in warm, dry conditions, the thought occurred to me that rugby is essentially a summer game played in the winter. Only the English could invent a game played through the hands and then soak the ball in a bath overnight.

For the players, there would be ample time in the shop window to break into provincial squads (which, as things stand, are effectively picked on previous season's form). I suppose that would be too radical, and would take about 20 years to be decided and agreed upon. But, winter or summer, the club game has to become what it should henceforth be: the third tier in a clearly defined structure, not a mongrel second tier.

The Irish did well enough in Europe: 10 wins between them and four wins out of eight against English opposition (English please note). But there's no justification or time for collective backslapping. The Scots, in attaining one knock-out place for the first time on the back of introducing full-time, 25-man squads on a minimum of around £18,000, showed what one of the next steps should be. The provinces should be allowed to start contracting players now, and not to ceilinged, one-year contracts.

Another should be to start planning a restructured Irish season immediately. No dilly-dallying.