Painting Cardiff carmine

For football’s partisans, a string of cup finals have been fraying nerves, stirring spirits, salting wounds and jerking tear ducts.

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Rupert Darwall

Labour has walked into a net-zero trap of its own making

For football’s partisans, a string of cup finals have been fraying nerves, stirring spirits, salting wounds and jerking tear ducts. Now it is rugby’s turn. This afternoon’s European club final — the Heineken — delivers a relishable match-up in Cardiff: France vs Ireland and Basque vs Celt in the he-man collision of Biarritz and Munster. It will be a white-knuckle ride; fast, fraught, furious; bone on bone, hit for hit — not remotely a pretty sight. But, olé and bejaysus, the commitment, the passion, the theatre! In just ten years the Heineken has become the most competitive tournament in world rugby and red-shirted, red-blooded and ferocious little Munster the most consistently competitive of any.