The fates have aligned rather nicely for Andy Farrell. It is not necessarily coincidence that Investec Champions Cup semi-final weekend falls a matter of days before the British and Irish Lions boss picks his squad on 8 May, but a meeting of Leinster and Northampton is precisely the sort of fixture he would have wanted on the docket with selection looming.
Of course, most of the thinking has already been done, perhaps a bit of tinkering at the edges still to take place but the bulk of the squad pencilled in. It would be wrong to misrepresent these final games as anything other than trivialities in an exceptionally large dataset. Yet for Northampton’s crop of contenders, this weekend could promise plenty – having pushed Leinster close in Dublin at this stage last year, another statement showing could well increase their representation on the plane.
