First Brian O'Driscoll announces his engagement, and then Gordon D'Arcy confides to a group of his closest friends -- well, a bunch of Sunday hacks sitting around his table in Donnybrook last week -- that he too wants to get married. And in his case, before the season is out. Is it all happening in Leinster or what?

In fairness to D'Arcy, it's a group gig he's after, and his announcement was in response to the line delivered earlier that day by Dean Richards to the effect that Leinster are the perennial bridesmaids of Europe. "He must be reading Martin Storey's speeches," D'Arcy said. "We've been the nearly men for so many years. Horrible tag to have -- I just hope we get married this year."

Only Leo Cullen has stood at the altar rails before D'Arcy, and even he escaped and got hitched to another suitor before coming back last year. It was September 1998 when a young Gordon D'Arcy caught all of us by surprise, none more than his opposite number in Stradey Park that day, Wayne Proctor. An outrageous try on his debut, followed by a scenic tour through the dead-ball area before calmly touching the ball down. That was the first we saw at this level of the stocky kid just out of school. "It was the impetuousness of youth," he says of that try. "And I just literally goose-stepped him around on the outside and completely threw him. And I just think it was literally -- nobody knew who I was and nobody knew what I could do, and that was literally it."

Nobody is better placed either to have witnessed the comings and goings through Donnybrook in the 11 seasons that have followed that debut. And where are they now? Going into a quarter-final in Europe, another quarter-final where few of their supporters, never mind those of us writing about them today, expect them to win. You have to wonder why that is.

On the face of it, Leinster have nailed the consistency challenge: this is their sixth quarter-final in eight seasons. In the same period only two other clubs have matched that (Leicester and Toulouse) and only one -- Munster -- have bettered it. So why do we adopt the brace position virtually every time Leinster go forth into the knockouts?

"It's hard for a player to get into the psyche of a supporter, but I can say we expected to win all those games, and more often than not we did or we were there or thereabouts," D'Arcy reckons.

Well, no actually, more often they weren't there or thereabouts. Or even close. Against Leicester in 2002 and 2005, they were well beaten before the finish; against Wasps in 2007 it was the same story. More than anyone, D'Arcy should recall the game in Adams Park for he was the victim of a mugging that day, and it was no random affair.

For the previous week, Wasps had prepared for him in the way a taskforce might knock on your door at 5.0am: tooled up and ready to go. Every time he carried the ball, they battered him, and the longer you watched it the more you wondered how Leinster could have been suckered so easily. It was days like that which have contributed to the idea that there is a not so fine line between Leinster getting out of their pool and Leinster going further.

"Every team has an image created they either like or don't like, and we've done our best to disassociate ourselves from that image that when we get to the knock-out stages that we're getting knocked out," he says. "I think we're a much more physical team, mentally and physically tough than we were in previous years. I think we are learning, but at the same time the opposition is getting better and the game is getting tougher too.

"The last couple of years' exits have been five per cent difference each side, we just need to be more championship smart. We're definitely learning from previous mistakes. Even the Munster match, we definitely learned from that."

If Ireland was a three-card trick comprising only Leinster, Ulster and Connacht, then there wouldn't be an issue. Having Munster in the same deck skews the game. Once Munster made it to the Heineken Cup final in 2000, we started looking at Leinster in a different light. If that lot -- who at times had looked like they couldn't find their way from Limerick to Cork, never mind around Europe -- could get to within a missed penalty of being crowned Heineken Cup champions, why couldn't the Donnybrook set go one step beyond? Even Ulster had managed it, and at Lansdowne Road to heighten the effect.

That syndrome took a deeper hold each successive season as Munster started qualifying by rote and Leinster stood up occasionally and then sat down again almost as fast. In 2003, the route was mapped out to the final when they got a home draw in the quarters with another in the semis as the prize for winning. They stood up against Biarritz, teetered a bit, and sat down against Perpignan.

In 2006, there was a different scenario. Cast your mind back to the quarter-finals where Munster dogged it out against Perpignan in Lansdowne Road and Leinster clipped Toulouse's wings in France. Where was your money when they met in the semis? Yes, most of the newspapers that morning went for Munster but every preview whether in a public bar or in print made allowance for the damage Leinster might do if they cut loose. And they were shredded.

That was Michael Cheika's first season on the job and if Leinster's European CV looks okay when viewed in isolation, rather than juxtaposing it with Munster's, then the coach's stats aren't too shabby either. In the Magners League, his team haven't finished outside the top three, and last year they won it. Currently they are on course for another runners-up spot. Unfortunately, the team on top is scripted to be Munster.

So you'd think whatever is wrong with Leinster it's not their coach who came here with no top-class experience on his CV yet has kept them in or around the medals in the league and with three out of four qualifications for the knock-out stages in Europe. Moreover, he has strengthened the side with some very good buys: repatriating Leo Cullen and Shane Jennings was good business; forking out for Rocky Elsom was astute and nailing down CJ van der Linde should have brought better results than it has.

There is something incongruous about such a powerful and destructive forward being undone by his big toe, but that's what has happened. For a reprise of what Leinster are missing, go back to October 18 and the demolition of Wasps in the RDS when all four of these players were fit and flying. That quartet, along with Stan Wright, Bernard Jackman, Malcolm O'Kelly and Jamie Heaslip, didn't feature again until Twickenham in round five when Van der Linde's return was cut short and Jackman's game finished early as well.

So from an appealing vista where Leinster had assembled a bruising pack that could trade profitably with any set of forwards in Europe, the view changed and it was back to fitful Leinster again. Enter the senior players behind the scrum, to get a grip on things and give direction? Eh, no.

This is where Cheika's weakness has been exposed. You don't have to dig too deep in the Leinster set-up to find those who believe he treats the senior players with too much deference. It has been obvious for some time that Shane Horgan has lost form and that Simon Keogh's positive contributions off the bench were worth a start. No change. This was the type of blinkered thinking which would have earned Eddie O'Sullivan both barrels from the media, but the love-bombing of the Leinster coach continues.

At the core of his performance is the inescapable fact that Leinster have not improved under him: he has kept them at the top end of the market but they have not advanced and are as likely to fold under pressure now as they were when he started. It was interesting to hear the rearguard action mounted in favour of Felipe Contepomi last week after another personal collapse against Munster. The defence of a man once so brilliant for his team was that he got stuck in. He ain't paid to beat the drum, he's paid to conduct the orchestra.

Nothing summed up that night however quite like the scene near the end when a heated debate arose between a couple of Blueshirts. Jonny Sexton, the management of whom has hardly fulfilled Cheika's promise on getting the gig four years ago to develop young talent, gave a mouthful to Horgan after something else had gone wrong. Horgan responded by marching over to him and returning the dose with interest.

And who was trying to calm it all down? Contepomi. There was something ironic about the capricious Argentine acting as peacemaker between the old and new guard in a spat that would have been fine on the training ground but should simply not happen on match day. And certainly not in Thomond Park in front of a delighted audience.

Against that backdrop, Gordon D'Arcy can't be too hopeful of getting the ring on his finger anytime soon. "For many long years we have been described as the bridesmaids of hurling," Martin Storey said, when he had climbed the steps of the Hogan Stand on that September Sunday in 1996 to collect the McCarthy Cup. "But today we got married."

It will require a fairytale ending for Storey's fellow Wexford man to follow him up the aisle.

- Brendan Fanning