Munster the European Champions, Leinster one of the top teams in Europe, Ireland Six Nations Champions, Ireland Tri Nations conquerors, O'Driscoll, O'Connell, Horgan, D'Arcy, Leamy. Has Irish rugby ever known such highs?

What's more, the Irish people seem ready to embrace the game whole-heartedly. The elite Dublin 4 element of Leinster rugby is about to be washed away in the rush to be part of Team Leinster. Ireland's new middle classes want to associate themselves with success and there are no better sporting symbols for the New Irish than the Leinster, Munster and Ireland rugby teams.

Remarkably, rugby could now be classed as the new League of Ireland.

Back in the 1950s, crowds of 20,000 supporters and more used to cram in to the likes of Tolka, Dalymount and Milltown parks, all to catch a glimpse of their local soccer heroes from Shamrock Rovers, Drumcondra or Shelbourne in the flesh. Paddy Coad and Bunny Fullam were the Brian O'Driscoll and Gordon D'Arcy of their day, and kids would do anything to see these gods at play just down the road.

But as Ireland changed in the 1960s, and found English soccer, rock and roll, TV and a whole other world out there, so the crowds drifted away from the League of Ireland, never to come back.

At least now, though, Irish rugby teams . . . the Munsters and the Leinsters . . . are proving themselves on the European as well as the domestic stage and for once we have local lads on local teams proving we can be as good as anything abroad.

In contrast, it's been a tough lesson learned for the League of Ireland since the 1950s. As one Irish football official once remarked: "We just never saw the day when the crowds wouldn't come any more".