I sat back and watched, with only the slightest exaggeration, Heineken Cup round one in its entirety, plus the Super League grand final. The whole weekend turned my head oval, like a hard-boiled egg sucked into a bottle.

The exaggeration was the watching bit. I could only listen to radio commentary, by the outstanding Gareth Charles on Radio Wales, of Scarlets-Brive. And I am sure I must have dreamt that I saw Treviso-Perpignan, because the final score was 9-8 to the Italian side and that can't be right, can it?

Rugby in such doses cannot be good for you. Ever since, I have found myself fuming at the reaction to the action, even as I try to tighten the strap around my chin, the moveable part of the helmet that the manufacturers guarantee will return my head to a rhomboid within a week.

No sooner had the final whistle gone in the very last game of an extraordinary weekend than everybody started comparing the relative strengths of the leagues, the Magners against the Guinness against the Top 14, and drawing conclusions about who was taking the competition seriously and who was not, based on who was rested in accordance with which peace treaty.

It's a simple reality of the modern professional game that players will be rested, even for international matches in November, and that deploying your forces with care doesn't form a coded insult to the integrity of a competition. Charting a course for soft human tissue through a nine-month season is a delicate business.

Anyone who thought that Leicester-Ospreys, Leinster-London Irish and Northampton-Munster weren't an improvement on standard fare and that the inclusion of the estimable Andrew Sheridan in the Sale team would somehow have halted Stade Toulousain in their tracks, well, I'm quite happy to lend them my head-shaper and help pull the strap to maximum constriction. Honestly, the rubbish we spew in these blog things. Yeah, I know – I said it.

It was a grand round one, and so was the Super League final – although he was off-side, wasn't he? – and all we should be doing is looking forward to more. Or, in Shane Jennings's case, to a long rest. Will somebody please explain to me the refusal of the wandering finger towards the eye socket to go away?

This is an extract from Eddie Butler's weekly email, The Breakdown. Have it sent directly to your inbox by signing up here