Here is a classified rundown of the Heineken Champions Cup quarter-final results. These games took place last Saturday and Sunday.
Leicester 41-13 Stade Francais
Leicester ran roughshod over Stade Francais in Welford Road on Saturday, scoring six tries in the process. Niki Goneva scored two tries with Manu Tuilagi, Freddie Burns, Mike Fitzgerald and Telusa Veainu grabbing the others.
Racing 92 19-16 Toulon
Seismic events in Paris as the reign of three-time champions Toulon came to an end. They were beaten by Johnny Sexton's former club, the former Racing Metro, currently named Racing 92.
Saracens 29-20 Northampton
Saracens (aka, Globogym), finalists in 2014, and the most loathed of all English clubs among Irish supporters, came from behind to beat Northampton in Allianz Park.
Chris Ashton grabbed a late insurance try to put the seal on the comeback.
Wasps 25-24 Exeter Chiefs
Wasps pipped the Exeter Chiefs after a dramatic comeback in the Ricoh Arena. With four seconds left on the frozen clock, Leinster reject Jimmy Gopperth nailed a conversion from the touchline to give Wasps a one-point victory. Charles Piatau had run in the try which had given Gopperth the opportunity to claim the victory.
The semi-finals will take place on the weekend of the 23rd and 24 April. Saracens will play Wasps in the first game in the Madejski Stadium and Leicester will face Racing 92 in the second semi-final in City Ground in Nottingham.
The final will take place in Lyon on the 14th May.
We haven't yet been shown a breakdown of the figures from Sky or BT, but we have reason to suspect that there was a sharp fall in the number of Irish people watching the quarter-finals of the Heineken Champions Cup this year.
The last 8 round of European club rugby's premier event were not the subject of what one might call a media blitz in this country.
The redoubtable Murray Kinsella excepted, Irish rugby twitter accounts that can usually be relied upon for either an irreverent or an analytic comment on the big rugby match were remarkably quiet over the weekend.
Irish fans were instead captivated by events in that long cherished competition, the Challenge Cup. Connacht, the new darlings of the game here, suffered an agonising loss against Bernard Jackman's Grenoble.
The Pro12, meanwhile, seems to be attracting significantly more column inches than usual. The Irish collapse in Europe may prove just the fillip the Pro12 needed. Let's hope it never looks back.
The casual fan may be surprised to learn that there were even European Cup matches played.
There are those who say that the palpable disinterest in the latter stages of the latest edition of the Heineken Champions Cup may has given credence to the argument of Miguel Delaney, Ewan MacKenna and co, that Irish people aren't so much interested in rugby as a sport as they are in cheering on Irish people abroad.
For their part, the English newspapers, who covered the latest round of the Heineken Champions Cup with abandon, appear unperturbed by the recent collapse in interest in this country.
Here are some other examples of Heineken/Champions Cup finals that no one in this country cared about.
2007: Wasps 25 - 9 Leicester
Sandwiched between Munster's European triumphs, the all-English 2007 Heineken Cup final was widely ignored in Ireland and is now little remembered. But the Wasps-Leicester game contained a big Irish interest with no fewer than seven Irish players named across both squads. Eoin Reddan scored the only try as Wasps womfortably won the all-Premiership clash.
2014 - Toulon v Saracens
When Munster fell to Saracens in that year's semi-final, the match was billed on Munster supporters blogs as 'Munster versus the Money'.
Saracens, meanwhile, are referred to exclusively as 'Globogym' by the people over at 'Whiff of Cordite'. A match where people wanted them both to lose.
2001 - Leicester 34-30 Stade Francais
Yet another game when a cussed English team managed to scare a French team into submission on their own ground, while any Irish viewer who accidentally happened upon the game yawned their way through it.
Munster reached the finals in 2000 and 2002. The tournament in between does not really register. Leicester won a magnificent, high-scoring encounter at the graveyard of the Irish, the Parc des Princes. Geordan Murphy wins his first Heineken Cup medal.
The match proceeded while the entire resources of the Irish state were devoted to making sure foot and mouth didn't set foot in the country.
Read more: 7 Irish Players Who've Won Heineken Cups With Non-Irish Clubs
