All totted up, there are 22 Heineken Cup exiles (and by this we mean Irish-born or internationals) registered to play for non-Irish teams, from James Downey at Calvisano, down to the seemingly irrepressible Trevor Brennan at Toulouse and right on up to the eight-strong Irish invasion at the Leicester Tigers.

"Jesus, is there 22?" says Bob Casey, one of the gang, plying his trade at London Irish. "I suppose there is when you sit down and think about it.

We have Aidan McCullen, Justin Bishop, Dan Murphy and Barry Everitt at London Irish, and in London alone there's a whole host of lads who live within a few miles."

Over at Wasps, they have four Irish players, all of whom are there or thereabouts when it comes to first-team selection. Eoin Reddan, Jeremy Staunton and Peter Bracken have all been regulars this season, while Johnny O'Connor should be back in contention when he returns from a serious neck injury next month. Up the M1 in Northampton, David Quinlan is making such an impression he was selected as captain in an EDF Energy Cup game a few weeks back, and while second-row Damien Browne has been in and out, he looks like he might just earn a starting spot in time for the Heineken Cup.

Then there's the Irish army at Leicester, a group that have been making quite an impression at Welford Road in the opening months of the season. Geordan Murphy, Leo Cullen and Shane Jennings have been established regulars for a couple of seasons now, but the form of Paul Burke and the electric Johnny Murphy has forced coach Pat Howard into a selection re-think. Throw in Gavin Hickie and Frank Murphy, the underrated former Munster scrum-half, and you'd imagine that the English players in the dressing-room must be fearing some kind of Irish revolution. And that's even without mentioning Ian Humphreys, brother of David, who's been omitted from the Heineken Cup squad but remains firmly in and around the fringes of the first team. "We have a fair few Irish guys now, " says Howard with a smile. "It's funny because when you recruit guys individually you never really think about where they're from but we kind of came in for pre-season and discovered we had eight. It's not an issue though, they're all good lads and they're certainly well able to mix."

That may be so but the problem for Bob Casey, the de-facto social secretary of the Irish in England, is that the ex-pats don't get to meet often enough. "In the summer we used to meet up in Oxford, " says the second-row, "that's the half-way point for the lads from London, Leicester and Northampton. But to be honest, we play about 35 games a season over here and there's not a lot of time to be meeting up with lads, no matter how much you want to.

Even after games, you head back pretty much straight away. It's not as social as you might think."

Besides those mentioned in Italy, France and England, there's a couple of other wanderers knocking about.

Simon Easterby will be hoping he can lead Llanelli through to the knock-out stages, while Mike Prendergast over in Bourgoin will no doubt be keen to take the field against former side Munster.

It's interesting to note that Trevor Brennan, in 2003 and 2005, and Geordan Murphy, 2001 and 2002, are the only Irish players to win the Heineken Cup with a nonIrish side. But there's a hefty gang out there who'll be looking to change that from next weekend onwards.