As you may have heard, Biarritz play Munster in the Heineken Cup final on 20 May in Cardiff and as well as being a matchup of all kinds of everything on the pitch, it also represents a clash of two contrasting rugby systems; the laissez-faire, every man for himself philosophy of French rugby and the near communist, everything for the greater good of the nation modus operandi that Irish rugby trundles along to. Swap Karl for Groucho and you've got the Irish system summed up to a tee but as we've been trying to tell those Yanks for years, socialism doesn't necessarily mean bad, just as capitalism doesn't always mean good. And that applies to rugby, too.

Shaun Edwards, the head coach at Wasps, always talks a lot of sense when it comes to rugby and the other day on a webchat on the Guardian website, he was asked why English teams struggle in the Heineken Cup. His response, well the long and the short of it anyway, was that English teams in European competition often come up against provincial teams, like those from Ireland, with powerful playing bases or French teams, like Biarritz, Stade Francais or Toulouse, who have much more spending power than English clubs hamstrung by a salary cap.

Leaving aside the beal bocht nature of his argument, Edwards does make a decent point. The centrally contracted Irish system allows a talented player base to be spread between just three provinces. Sorry Connacht. It produces three powerful, well-rested, well-nurtured, very familiar teams. In France, meanwhile, the money floating around the game allows the best players to be accumulated between three, maybe four, super teams. It's an economic certainty. In England, conversely, the argument is that because each club has a salary cap of £2million, the talent pool in the country is spread across 12 teams. Thus when European competition comes around, no one team is good enough to make a mark on the continent.

So while Edward's is jealous of both the French and Irish set-ups, and what clubs from both countries are able to achieve because of it, you can be certain that Munster don't look at themselves with quite the same degree of glee. The centrally contracted system may have its benefits but the free availability of hard cash certainly isn't one of them, and while they've been attempting to take that final step and actually win the Heineken Cup over the past few years, the lack of lolly for new, quality signings hasn't helped their cause one bit.

It's quite the opposite for their final opponents next month. Biarritz Olympique Pays Basque, the give them their full title, are a club with a strong identity who've not been afraid to turn themselves into an economic entity to achieve their goals.

That is, to be successful. Back at the dawn of professionalism, Biarritz's budget for the season was 800,000, a fairly representative figure of what was going on with most French clubs back then. This season the wedge Marcel Martin has handed over is just over 8million, not a king's ransom when compared to either Stade Francais or Toulouse, but enough to make Munster jealous. When a player becomes available, say an Aussie or Kiwi who fancies a bit of culture in the northern hemisphere, Biarritz are in a position to pounce. When a player like Brian O'Driscoll hums and haws about where he wants to play rugby next year, Biarritz are able to court him. When the likes of Imanol Harinordoquy, Damien Traille or Dimitri Yachvilli want to move from the likes of Pau or Brive, Biarritz are able to pay the wages to attract them.

Munster quite simply, in all the above cases, don't have the cash to be serious contenders when the serious players become available. Think about who they've signed over the past couple of years, seasons when they've badly needed quality additions to their backline. Jason Jones-Hughes. James Storey. Paul Devlin. Anthony Pitout. Gary Connolly. True, the likes of Shaun Payne and Trevor Halstead have been successes but both of those particular signings were stabs in the dark that came good rather than anything else.

They've been the exception, not the rule.

Munster are funded in a roundabout way. The IRFU pays the wage bill of a fixed amount of players, and hands the province somewhere in the region of 2.5million for operational costs. In return for their financial input, the IRFU, through the PAG, are able to dictate who does or does not play for Munster, and are allowed to take international players away from the province whenever they want.

In terms of recruitment outside the fixed number of full-time contracts the IRFU pay for (believed to be 32), Munster are perfectly entitled to go out and sign anybody they like with the money they've generated themselves . . . as they did in the case of Christian Cullen . . . but there's one big problem. They don't generate a hell of a lot of money themselves. The incomes they're allowed to keep are principally gate receipts and sponsorship agreements but even in the case of the Heineken Cup quarter-final at Lansdowne Road last month, Munster got something of a raw deal. Of an estimated 1.5million earned from the fixture, the Perpignan and ERC share amounted to something close to 500,000 and with regards the other 1million, it was split equally between the Munster Branch and the IRFU. That left Munster with 500,000 to put into their coffers down in Cork but had they been operating like Biarritz do, it would have been double that. And there's the handicap.

Not that Munster can completely point the finger at the IRFU. They are allowed to operate commercially themselves and you could argue that they don't use their brand to the full potential. A cursory glance at both team's websites tells a lot. In the sponsors section on the Munster site, nine companies are named, while the same section on the Biarritz equivalent, lists somewhere in the region of 400 partners. Biarritz know what they're about. Operating within a system where nearly everything is done for them, Munster haven't quite grasped it yet.

But what will it all mean on 20 May? It could amount to nothing. But if Munster are a world-class back short of winning for the third time in as many Heineken Cup final appearances, the debate will start all over again. Money, money, money.