Brendan Fanning salutes the difficult birth of the Heineken Cup final as a stand-alone event in The Sunday Independent.
"It was 2003 and still the early days of the Heineken Cup as a stand-alone affair, where its organisers had taken a leap of faith and nailed down where the final would be played before they had nailed down who would actually play in it. And they needed some local involvement to give the thing a kick-start. Some reassurance if you like.
"With the way the draw had panned out, giving Leinster a home run from the quarters to the final, that reassurance was at hand. Then they went and lost to Perpignan in the semi-final. Oh dear.
"Everyone was shell-shocked afterwards. Not so distraught however that we couldn't mine some black humour from the situation. On the basis that one man's catastrophe is another man's opportunity -- and how we have seen that reinforced over the last eight days -- the prospect of a junket to the South of France presented itself. Perpignan versus Toulouse in a Lansdowne Road final? Now there was a gig that needed selling."
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