Keith Duggan Sideline Cut

It is wintry as anything out there and all of a sudden the conditions seem apt for Irish rugby. After much ado, the Rugby World Cup arrived, stayed as long as the relative that can't take a hint and then just vanished, leaving us with nothing more than a strange, weekday parade through Charing Cross by the white knights of England.

Blighty is a world champion at something and, hey, what do you know, life is still tolerable. Since the New Year, Clive Woodward has been merrily assuring everyone that the time has come to take a wrecking ball to the team he so carefully pruned and primed. The past means nothing, he has said. Woodward is psyched by the luminous talent at his disposal and awaiting selection, talent which, he insists, will replace even Jonny Wilkinson should form demand it. No white jersey is automatic.

Back in Ireland, the discussion is how best to fill the alarming number of green jerseys that appear to have become vacant. The epic trip Down Under left a mixed legacy. Paul O'Connell continues to go on the rampage week in, week out. Few benefited from the sweatshop of the World Cup as much as he. But, in general, the tournament will be remembered for the poignant and - this has never really been said - unsatisfying end to the Irish career of Keith Wood.

It went against all the man stood for that the curtains should fall on a moribund and tame quarter-final that was as quiet as the vast sections of the empty seats.

Wood's farewell, the sickening injury to Geordan Murphy in the warm-up to the event and the busting of Denis Hickie just when things seemed to be going swimmingly are all problems Eddie O'Sullivan has to resolve before Ireland visit Paris. That opening game against France in mid- February promises none of the cavalier Celtic adventures of recent years. The omens are that the cockerel will be on parade early on. Add in serious doubts over Brian O'Driscoll's fitness, then Ireland go into the match missing their leader for the past 10 years, their best and most important player, their second-best and most exciting player and their record try scorer. Such losses would be enough to bushwhack the hopes of a nation with strong reserves. For Ireland, with due respect to the players that will fill their places, such losses must be regarded as insupportable.

The recent bickering over the dual pressures of country and province placed on Irish internationals has arisen only because of the uncertain form both Munster and Leinster have been in. It goes without saying that Alan Gaffney and Gary Ella could have done without their best players going through rigorous pre-season camps smack bang in the middle of the make-or-break weeks of the European Cup.

But O'Sullivan doesn't get paid to go along and shout with the best of them at Thomond Park. The trail to glory is littered with fallen Irish coaches who took on the job boasting reputations more grandiose than Eddie's. The experiences of Warren Gatland and Brian Ashton, of Jimmy Davidson and Noel Murphy, even of Mick Doyle, demonstrate that few positions in Irish sport are as perilous as that of Irish rugby coach. O'Sullivan's interests are tied to the fortunes and wellbeing of the provinces, but ultimately he can afford to care about the results of one team only.

It seems not so long ago when January to April consisted, in sporting terms, of long and morbid treatises detailing the unremitting ghastliness of the health of Irish rugby. Seasons were discussed not in terms of games won but in terms of tries scored. There was a long period when an Irish international try was treated as some trip into exotica. We lost, we lost often and heavily - remember Nicky Popplewell blubbering on his hands and knees when he experienced his first win despite wearing the green jersey for about 300 years?

Those days were grim but also wildly exciting, because there was no telling what manner of indignity or emergency Ireland would lurch to from one game to the next. And then there was always the unlikely summoning of a capricious collective talent, generally buried under a pile of paperwork and poor organisation, that somehow illuminated the players and brought about wondrous wins like those against England in 1993 and 1994.

Blinding rainbows in the gaps of the lifelong downpour.

It felt like all those years of foostering around were shed that day against Scotland in 2000 and, more particularly, during O'Driscoll's incredible hat-trick of tries in Paris. Ireland looked young, professional, naively ambitious and daring. Suddenly, they were a team worthy of our cares.

When the O'Driscoll era is finally over - and hopefully that will not be before he has left many more jewels for posterity - it is hard to imagine anything will top the carefree elan and class he exhibited that day.

This preamble all leads towards the rugby being played this weekend. This may be overstating it, but for some reason this Munster game seems to have acquired an inordinate weight of importance. Leinster's season is already teetering, spooked by the mess-up over Felipe Contepomi and perhaps ruined by the unlucky loss to Sale last weekend. It has been argued that last year's tournament was set up for a Leinster win and the pity is that they could not deliver in front of a packed Lansdowne Road.

For Munster, hope springs eternal. Yet the manner of their dismemberment against Gloucester last weekend encouraged experts across the sea to claim their best days had come and gone; that they are a worthy but limited and fading entity.

The fear is that Gloucester will prove that to be the case in Limerick. So many of Munster's games have been bruising, epic, against-the-ropes encounters. Sooner or later that catches up. At times last weekend, Munster looked leaden and bereft of the old authority, and that introduces an air of trepidation to this game. Maybe they will manage to wring out another heroic chapter, but how often can we depend on another virtuoso show from O'Gara or Williams or Foley? Always the same names.

Maybe Munster will survive on instinct and become a team reborn when Christian Cullen comes in. That would be wonderful. Or maybe this will finally be the season when they cannot touch on the impossible.

If that is the case, then the next few months could well become grim. Perhaps Munster and Leinster's finest chance to emulate Ulster in 1999 has passed. But at least they were competing, as were Ireland, playing hosts to the eventual world champions in a Grand Slam game at Lansdowne Road last season.

Maybe the past few years are as good as it can possibly get for Ireland. A small country with a narrow playing base, Ireland handled the inception of professionalism better than most rugby nations. But the bills are stacking high, the legs are tired and the schedule ahead is packed and ominous. It is, as we have heard down all the years, time for backs-to-the-wall stuff.