OFFHAND, it's difficult to think of a more successful overall year for Irish rugby. Munster won the Heineken Cup, Ulster the Celtic League and while the Triple Crown is something that we shouldn't really be getting too excited about in this day and age, at least the new trophy specially commissioned for the feat allowed Brian O'Driscoll to get his mitts on something physical at Twickenham back on Paddy's weekend. In a lot of ways, though, that's just the fluff.

Dig deeper and you see the other successes, like the sheer number of people that are now following the game, the huge media profile the sport now enjoys, the amount of replica jerseys the four provinces and the international team are now selling. Lansdowne Road, too, is soon to be levelled, and while many of the gifted players we now possess may be past the peak of their powers by the time it re-emerges from the rubble in two, three, maybe four years' time, at least they'll be playing in the country's largest and most impressive stadium until that happens.

The only caveat in a year of general merriment is the club game, an area of Irish rugby that could be a crucial link in the professional chain if the right steps are taken over the next 12 months. Have anything more than 10 teams in the top flight and the AIB League is screwed; cut the numbers to that size and club rugby has a genuine opportunity to become relevant once more. It's as simple as that.

So while the club game needs to look at the mistakes of the past and learn from them, much of Irish rugby's success this season came from players, coaches and officials learning from previous oversights. As GBS says at the top of the piece, success sprouts from making a mistake once and not making it again, and if there's an overall theme to the past 12 months in Irish rugby, it's just that.

Lessons were learned and mistakes rectified, as the three examples below prove.

MUNSTER AND THE HEINEKEN CUP Before last May in Cardiff, Munster viewed their two previous Heineken Cup final appearances in completely different lights. The final against Northampton back in 2000 was the one that got away. They didn't play all that well on the day and even a 10 per cent increase on performance on that particular afternoon in question would probably have edged them past an organised if limited Northampton outfit. David Wallace's first-half try ensured Munster won the try count on the day but after that their attempts at breaching the Saints rearguard were laboured in the extreme.

If that was the one that got away, the 2002 final against Leicester was the game they didn't deserve to win. While most who watched that final will highlight Neil Back's late illegal intervention as the game's pivotal moment, those playing on the day knew that they were simply beaten by a better team, a Tigers side who comfortably outscored Munster on the try front. "They scored two tries, we scored none and you can't argue with that, " recalls Mick Galwey. "They were just a better team than us and we didn't deserve to win, it was as simple as that."

The 2006 final, then, was the game when they applied the lessons learned on their two previous appearances on European rugby's grandest stage. Having gone a try down early on in the game, Ronan O'Gara kicked a penalty after eight minutes to narrow the gap between the sides. Four minutes later Serge Betsen dragged down a maul inside his own half and everybody in the Millennium Stadium expected the Munster out-half to point towards the sticks to close that gap ever further. But he didn't. An on field briefing between O'Gara and Anthony Foley saw the decision taken to kick for the corner and although their line-out maul was hauled down short of the line, the subsequent penalty signalled by Chris White was again kicked to touch.

When Biarritz fly-hacked the ball into the Munster half, it appeared that the gamble hadn't paid off but an O'Gara chip and chase, married to some brutish carries by Jerry Flannery, Donncha O'Callaghan and Denis Leamy, set up the position for O'Gara to put Halstead over in the corner. Two relatively simple three-pointers in quick succession had been spurned and instead, a huge risk taken. But it paid its reward. Two previous finals had been lost under the assumption that you could go out and play your normal game and still hope to come out on top.

This time, however, Munster knew that risks need to be taken for finals to be won. And the third time round, they took their fair share and landed the ultimate prize.

THE LEINSTER BRANCH The people running Leinster rugby won't have too many complimentary press cuttings in their possession from the past couple of years. Their catalogue of misfortunes, meanwhile, could be published in a Christmas volume. Having lost Matt Williams to Scotland back in 2003, they confirmed that Jon Callard would replace him as head coach only for the former England full-back to change his mind at the last minute. They then decided to appoint Gary Ella to fill the role. A genuine guy, the former Wallaby wasn't in any way cut out for coaching in the professional era and his departure was pretty hasty at the end of the season. And that wasn't all in 2003/4.

During that period, they signed Felipe Contepomi in a blaze of glory from Bristol but they clean forgot to register him for that season's Heineken Cup. Ouch. Having eventually got their hands on a decent coach in the shape of Declan Kidney, they simply couldn't hold on to him when Munster attempted to entice him south. Even as recently as October, they were heavily criticised by their own supporters for making a complete hash out of the ticketing arrangements for the Magners League game against Munster.

Thousands of supporters, as most people had predicted, turned up at the gates of Lansdowne Road looking to gain access on the night but there weren't enough officials on duty to allow them into the ground in a reasonable manner. Instead, somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 fans arrived in the stadium a good 10 to 20 minutes after the game had kicked off. A mess.

But, but, but. Things have changed and lessons appear to have been heeded. The marketing and general arrangements for 'The Last Stand', this afternoon's Magners League clash between Leinster and Ulster, has been genuinely groundbreaking. It's going to be a sell-out and the work that the entire Leinster executive . . . chief executive, marketing manager, media manager and so forth . . . have put in over the past few weeks has been impressive. It appears that the organisation that's gone into today's game will serve as a future model for any other sporting organisation in this country attempting to promote a sizeable event. Nice work.

Not only that, 2006 proved that Michael Cheika and David Knox are the real deal.

Having lurched from one coaching crisis to another over the past three season, the appointment of the open minded and creative Australian coaching duo proves that the Leinster Branch have learned from the lessons of the past. The province have always need a coach who ruled by consensus rather than pure discipline and in Cheika they've certainly got that. The organisation has come a long way in 2006.

THE IRISH TEAM This time last year it was difficult to be optimistic about this Irish side. It had little to do with the players, but rather the coach, who was fitting his players into a formula rather than designing the formula to suit the players. At half-time in the Parc des Princes in early February, his side were 43-3 down and an already tricky-looking Six Nations campaign was beginning to look even more difficult. But then the formula, not quite a straitjacket but something close to it, was dissolved at the interval and Ireland played such clever, heads-up rugby that you really had to wonder who was in charge.

Credit to the coach, though. He learned his lesson on that nippy French afternoon and gradually, between then and the close of the summer tour, the game plan started to be designed around the players and their individual abilities and not some slavish coachingcentred recipe. Example number one came at Twickenham when Ronan O'Gara, Brian O'Driscoll and Shane Horgan conjured up a try from inside their own 22 from an audacious move that the coach wouldn't even have dreamt of implementing 12 months previous. But that wasn't the only lesson this Irish team proved they'd learned over the course of their 11 match season.

During their summer tour in the southern hemisphere, Brian O'Driscoll's side rattled New Zealand on two occasions, and they even led Australia in Perth at the hour mark on their final game of the tour. But in each of those games, they were blown away in the last 20 minutes, firstly because you felt they didn't really believe they could win any of the three games, and secondly, because most of the 15 players had shipped too much punishment over the first 60 minutes and needed replacing. After the Australian test, it was put to O'Sullivan at a press conference that perhaps he should have made a few changes for the final test and the coach responded by aggressively asking the journalist in question, "Who would you have dropped?" But if the coach had missed the point back then . . . it wasn't a matter of dropping anyone, he merely needed to give some weary legs a rest . . . he showed his eventual understanding of the situation during the November tests. After South Africa were comprehensively beaten in the first game, the coach made four changes against Australia and another sound beating of a top tier nations was achieved. The coach then made nine changes for the Pacific Islands test and the hat-trick was complete without fuss. In a sport which requires such physical exertion, players can't be expected to perform at the highest level three weekends in a row O'Sullivan's actions in November prove that he has learned that particular lesson.