The Heineken Cup semi-finals this weekend will be awash with world class players - and there could be a pride of approaching 30 past, present and future British & Irish Lions involved in the huge matches at Croke Park and the Millennium Stadium.
Before luckless Munster scrum half Tomas O'Leary was injured playing for the defending champions at the weekend, over half the 37-player party named to tour South Africa in the summer were in line to be in high profile and high intensity knock-out action.
Internationals from a number of other countries, including New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, France, Italy, Argentina, Fiji and Tonga, could be involved along with the reduced number of 18 of the 2009 Lions tourists.
Those Lions potentially going on Heineken Cup semi-final parade are:
MUNSTER (7): Paul O'Connell (captain), Jerry Flannery, Donncha O'Callaghan, Alan Quinlan, David Wallace, Keith Earls, Ronan O'Gara
LEINSTER (4): Jamie Heaslip, Rob Kearney, Luke Fitzgerald, Brian O'Driscoll
CARDIFF BLUES (6): Gethin Jenkins, Martyn Williams, Andy Powell, Leigh Halfpenny, Jamie Roberts, Tom Shanklin
LEICESTER TIGERS (1): Harry Ellis
There are also former Lions tourists - Martin Corry, Ben Kay, Lewis Moody, Geordan Murphy, Julian White (Leicester Tigers), Gareth Thomas (Cardiff Blues), Gordon D'Arcy, Shane Horgan, Malcolm O'Kelly (Leinster) and John Hayes (Munster) - who could feature in the matches.
And they will have the audiences their collective talents deserve with well over 110,000 fans set to go through the turnstiles in Dublin and Cardiff to send the tally for the season soaring past the one million mark for the first time.
Another first will be the combined seven-figure attendance for the showpiece games, comfortably topping the 82,500 who were at the 2004 semi-finals.
The historic Croke Park contest - the first Heineken Cup match staged at the arena - is on course for an 82,300 capacity attendance, topping the current world record of 81,600 for a club rugby match set when London Wasps and Leicester Tigers met at Twickenham Stadium last year.
Meanwhile, the clash between Cardiff Blues and Leicester Tigers at the Millennium Stadium on Sunday will be the first Heineken Cup semi-final to be played at the home of Welsh rugby, with over 30,000 tickets already sold.
But it will be the third time that Dai Young's Blues will run out at the venue this season, having defeated English and French opposition in Gloucester Rugby and Toulouse on their way to the second of the Heineken Cup semi-finals.
