It's an odd thing to say about one of the most prestigious competitions there is in rugby, yet it's true. Just think.

Who won the 1999 Heineken Cup? Easy, Ulster. Who won the 1999 All Ireland in football? That's right; even you casual Gah-fans know it was Meath. Now, who won the 1999 Five Nations Championship?

We'll help jog your memory. It wasn't England. Up until the very last moment of that campaign, it seemed certain they would but then Scott Gibbs (right) charged through for that try in Wembley and Neil Jenkins tapped over the conversion. It left England crushed, especially Clive Woodward. By half-four the following morning he was driving to his office in Twickenham. There he found the following email from a jubilant Welsh supporter. "Why are England the world's greatest lovers?

Because they can stay on top for 82 minutes and still come second."

Another clue. England only finished second to Wales on the day, not in the championship table. That was to someone else.

In his book, Winning! though, Woodward makes no reference as to who that was. He doesn't even mention missing out on the championship. It was the Grand Slam he had been denied.

There have been four subsequent Grand Slams - England once, the Welsh once, and the French twice. But for the last two years there hasn't been any. In fact, there hasn't been an outright championship winner. Last year the trophy was presented to French captain Fabien Pelous in a makeshift television studio minutes after Shane Horgan's iconic try in Twickenham. The contrast was incredible, leaving Pelous feeling and looking like Daniel O'Donnell would trying to follow Jimi Hendrix's guitar-burning act in Monterey - sheepish, if polite, and largely irrelevant.

The championship itself has always been something of an afterthought.

Younger followers might be amazed to discover that up until as recently as 1992 the championship could be shared.

In 1973 there was the bemusing scenario of all five nations winning the title, all having won and lost two games. But rugby is a much more serious, professional and popular business now.

Its growth, especially in this country, has been driven by clever, innovative development and competition structures like the Heineken Cup. The International Rugby Board are now talking of having another trans-hemisphere international tournament two years before and after every World Cup, featuring the top eight teams in the world.

The downside is it could be more competitive and even bigger than the World Cup.

While we might suggest it would be a better idea to hold the World Cup every three years, instead of following soccer's lead of four, at least there's an awareness of the need to change and improve.

It's time rugby's oldest international competition was revamped too. Points difference is too haphazard and flippant a manner to decide the championship. It's time for a championship final.

Let the two top teams in the table play-off for the title itself, with the top team having home advantage for that final. What would have been a more satisfying climax to the championship? The one we got this weekend or the one we'd get with a France-Ireland final in Paris?

Sure, a championship final will be hard to squeeze into an already-compressed schedule. It took the Celtic Nations to resist French and English pleas to run the championship over five successive weekends, instead of the existing seven-week window. But by unwittingly downplaying the importance of who wins the championship, the authorities are devaluing the championship itself and what the last two months has been all about.

Of course, in deciding just who the two championship finalists should be might require the points-difference scenario again. But so be it. Every competition has to have a cut-off point. Winning the Grand Slam would be more than its own reward too - it would secure that valuable home-advantage for the final.

Rugby is unique in world sport for the sense of pride and honour, the sense of representing that players and supporters experience with every international fixture. In soccer, they have friendlies. In rugby they have tests, and the difference is apparent in approach as well as terminology. It's why autumn internationals are such big events at the time, and why, last weekend, Scotland scared Ireland, and the English overturned the French.

But there's something wrong with a competition when it's only seven days old, one of its two-best teams has played only twice, and already the championship is seen to be out of their reach. It's why so many left Croke Park deflated last month after the French game. The Grand Slam was gone. So, effectively, was the championship; to win it would be by default and an afterthought.

It's not the way it should be, but it is the way it is. After all, who remembers Scotland won it in '99?