It doesn’t matter if it’s a friendly, a Heineken Cup or a Rabo game, it also doesn’t matter when in the season it happens - any time these two provinces meet, you will be sure to see the game of the season.

A Munster v Leinster game is more than any other game, winning means more than the points you pick up or where in the table you end up, losing is the ultimate sucker punch giving rival fans the bragging rights for five months until March when they do it all again in Dublin 4.

Both sides both picked up wins at the weekend and got their campaigns back on track, Leinster beating Cardiff comfortably at home and Munster doing just enough against Newport Gwent Dragons at Musgrave Park.

Rob Penney and Matt O’Connor both had the options to bring back Lions players and they did quite well.

Brian O’Driscoll in his final season playing rugby, looked just as good as he did when he scored those famous three tries in Paris in the year 2000.

Hard to believe it’s been 13 years, just fitting I suppose for the greatest Irish rugby oplayer ever to wear 13 on his back. He created Sean Cronin’s try but was running terrific lines to set people up, the only thing missing was a score of his own.

Leinster were also able to welcome back Rob Kearney, Jamie Heaslip and Cian Healy, all of whom started.

For Munster, they were only able to start Simon Zebo in their win against Dragons while Paul O’Connell came on as a second-half substitution. Conor Murray is still injured and will most likely miss this clash of the titans.

Down the years we have had the battle of the number 10’s to look forward to as Ronan O’Gara and Jonathon Sexton were building up a rivalry for the Irish 10 shirt, this time we won’t have that as both men are now with Racing Metro in Paris.

It will still be an interesting contest with Ian Madigan/Jimmy Gopperth going up against Ian Keatley/JJ Hanrahan, but it just won’t have the panache the O’Gara/Sexton contest did.

Last time the sides met in Thomond Park, Brian O’Driscoll scored a try at the posts late on to see Leinster winners, coming from behind. There is no doubt that after his impressive display, all eyes again will be on BOD.

Last season, Munster were put under the telescope as new coach at the time, Rob Penney tried to make his mark on the team. His mark however wasn’t covered in Munster red, in-fact it was a black mark drawn all over what Munster Rugby is.

Fans, before Rob came in, would have said nobody could do worse with the squad than Tony McGahan did, but Penney’s game plan right through the season choked the life out of the province.

The clearest evidence came in the unbelievably embarrassing thrashing they got at the hands of Glasgow, losing 51-24.

Never in all the years I’ve been watching rugby have I seen Munster cough up 51 points.

[comment]Paul O'Connell during the game against the Dragons last Saturday. Pic: Sportsfile.[/comment]

The season break should have served as an opportunity to go back to basics and so far, despite losing to Treviso on match week 3, there seems to be a much improved product. The players seem comfortable with the plan, they are using space and width when it is needed and yes, while there is room for improvement, I remain much more optimistic about their chances this season as the Heineken Cup looms.

For Leinster’s part, it looked like the coaching transition that Munster experienced last season is happening to them too, Matt O’Connor came in to replace Joe Schmidt who took up national duties and he saw his side, albeit a very young and experimental side, not win any of their pre-season games.

It would have been naïve to predict a season based on that, especially when on the first night Leinster secured a bonus-try win at Scarlets.

However the stabilizers were perhaps taken off a little too early as the following weeks saw a draw against old foes Ospreys and a loss to Glasgow away.

Leinster were doing things very well in both of those games, particularly the Ospreys game which saw the champions score 10 points while they had a man in the bin, so it’s hard to see how they were coming up short but certainly the weekend’s bonus point win will have sounded a warning.

I have always said through the years that the first Munster vs Leinster game after a poor Six Nations campaign is always good as players have the chance to knock seven shades of you-know-what out of each other.

We had that earlier in the year but perhaps this weekend’s encounter might pack more as players have a new national coach to try and impress.

You would think the Leinster lads would have the upper hand there. Most of them bar a few have played under Joe Schmidt before, leaving the Munster team under a lot of pressure.

That said, Munster rise to pressure situations like they did against Harlequins in last season’s Heineken Cup when they were written off before the game.

Over the years Leinster have had the upper hand in terms of wins in Thomond Park, the RDS and the Aviva Stadium where the next encounter in March 2014 is due to take place.

The scrum is one of the big areas to pay attention to. At the weekend, Munster’s scrum was very solid, bar the odd penalty against it at the end of the game.

It was the same for Leinster but despite this, instead of looking at the players, the ref will be under the spotlight. Since the start of the season, the men in the middle have come under heavy criticism for how they interpret the new laws.

Andrew Conway and Felix Jones are expected to come up against their former sides, Conway was decent on the wing and Jones, who has been so unfortunate with injury lately came on in the second half and made an immediate impact.

Hard to know if we expect to see new Leinster signing Lote Tuquri starting, if so there will be an immediate danger to the Munster men.

The song ‘Two tribes’ by Frankie goes to Hollywood provides the perfect soundtrack for the week that’s in it as the ‘El Classico’ of the rugby world looms ever closer.