I always felt disconnected to the Magners League because I was not watching it with quite the same intensity as other rugby as it was not my job.
Now my job is to analyse the totality of Irish rugby and that is great because it means we can connect, pick up on young players coming through and cover the game in its entirety.
From the rugby perspective, the addition of the two Italian teams means there are more games. However, we know that Brian O’Driscoll will not play in every Magners League game, every Heineken Cup game and every Irish match because if he did he probably would not be able to finish the season, particularly as it leads into the Rugby World Cup. O’Driscoll and all of the other Irish internationals will have their playing time restricted.
So there will be games where Leinster, Ulster, Munster and Connacht cannot get their best teams on the field and that will make it more difficult for the Irish provinces to win this competition.
It goes back to something we have always suffered from in Irish rugby: lack of depth. Part of the reason for that is that players in this country tended to go on longer than others. Think of Willie John McBride, Tom Kiernan and plenty of others.
Sometimes, the effect of that was to block the arrival of younger talent. People reading this piece might wonder who Seamus Kelly is. Seamus Kelly is a player who could have had a truckload of caps for Ireland but he happened to be around at the same time as Jack Kyle. John Hewitt was in the same situation: he only won one cap.
Hewitt and Kelly were two of the best out-halves of their era but they couldn’t get a match.
Now, the Magners League is a tremendous opportunity for young players to show what they can do against the established players from week to week. What we now have is a situation in which players can really be tested at a level below the Heineken Cup. It is a graduated tournament structure – much like golf – where players can step up through the levels.
But the priorities are still obvious. For ordinary rugby supporters, it is about winning the World Cup, followed by the Six Nations, followed by the Heineken Cup, followed by the Magners League.
The national team is the priority and that is as it should be. Irish rugby can only pay its way – up to and including the Aviva Stadium - if the national team is performing well and I think we are set fair to have that happen to a reasonable degree. I think we will beat the ratio of one Grand Slam every sixty years. But it might not be much better than one every thirty years because it is the most competitive rugby tournament on earth.
But the way in which the Magners League fits into the structure of Irish rugby is crucial. The opportunity to use it to develop Irish talent must not be wasted.
Take Ulster as an example. They have got four big name South African players on their books – Johann Muller, Pedrie Wannenburg, Ruan Pienaar and BJ Botha – with three of those arriving this season.
That can be looked at in two ways. On the one hand, Ulster may be more competitive because they can pick these players. On the other, every time a province brings in a player from outside, it puts and Irish player out of the mix.
There is an argument that players like Rocky Elsom drive the standard up but in the back-row, you have three slots to play around with and hence some more latitude. There are plenty of ways to develop back-rowers and it can be done quickly.
The key worry is that we are finding that every prop forward in the country is a foreigner and that is no good to us. Props are the most difficult players to develop. It takes longer and it is harder than any other position because there are massive physical, technical and mental requirements.
That type of situation is repeated across the provinces and it is a worry. We have to depend on the Irish Rugby Football Union to keep that under control and the hope for Irish rugby has to be that the Magners League will continue to offer young Irish talent a chance to prove itself.
