Scrum.com reached a landmark birthday earlier this year and as part of our celebrations we take a look back on a decade of domestic battles.

There could be little more appropriate than that Saracens v Newcastle should be the final club match of 2007.

A decade ago, when scrum.com saw first the light of ether, it was the clash of England's dominant clubs, first and second in the 1997-8 Premiership.

To go with new technology, it looked as though English rugby - only a couple of years into a rather unwilling professionalisation - was taking on a new order, with the nouveaux riches in the ascendant. Richmond, another new-money club, were fifth.

Yet, like a number of the innovations of the era, though happily not this website, it proved to be a false dawn. Newcastle have not since finished higher than sixth, while Saracens have struggled more than they have challenged.

The old order returned in the shape of Leicester - whose five titles and two Heineken Cups make them the club of scrum.com's first decade - and Wasps, the team you least want to meet in a Cup Final after taking three titles following second-place finishes and two Heinekens.

At one level little has changed. Of the 12 teams in this season's Premiership, ten were there a decade ago - and the exceptions, Leeds and Worcester, are the bottom two.

At another, there has been a spectacular transformation. A decade ago the average Premiership gate was just under 6,000. So far this season it is around 10,500.

From being roughly in parallel with the third level of the Football League, it is now around 40 per cent ahead. If one function of a club system is to generate players for the national team, it has also to convince customers that it is worth supporting for its own sake.

That growth in crowds and the careers of players like prolific Sale wing Steve Hanley, subtly skilled Saracens flanker Tony Diprose and Leicester prop Darren Garforth - all capped, but with their most significant achievements at club level, are evidence that the Premiership has achieved this.

It has not always been a comfortable ride - years of club-country conflict arising from failure to confront the implications of professionalism may, or may not, have ended with this year's peace deal.

There were ugly moments - the Premiership's ruthless dumping of London Scottish and Richmond in 1999 won no friends. No more did the blocking of Rotherham's promotion three years later. But the achievement, particular since the salary cap ended the endemic insecurity of the early days, is not in doubt.

France too had upwardly mobile champions in 1997-8, although given that Stade Francais had won eight French titles before 1908 they could hardly be called nouveau. It was rather as if Corinthians or Preston had re-emerged as the dominant force in English football.

But nor - Max Guazzini being much more of a stayer than John Hall or Ashley Levett - have they been a flash in the pan, adding three more titles in a decade they have shared with established giant Toulouse and revived Biarritz.

Their 39-3 hammering of Toulouse, ending their victims' four-year run as champions, in the semi-final in 1998 was one of the epochal results of the past decade.

By contrast with England, France has undergone considerable institutional change - gradually slimming down its once vast top flight, moving from two pools to a single competition in 2003 and then cutting 16 teams to 14. The deeper roots of French club culture has meant that the PRO2 competition has also attracted decent crowds.

Regular contact with the French was the great selling point of the Heineken Cup when it started in 1995-6, and they had much the better of the early years, with Toulouse taking the first title and Brive the second, dazzling in a manner no finalist has yet really emulated.

Remarkably no other French team has yet taken the trophy, although Toulouse have won twice more, both in all-French finals. Stade and Biarritz have both been too addicted to the percentage play that has earned them domestic success to take the final step in Europe.

The two best finals since Brive's win have been English victories over French opposition - Leicester's triumph against Stade in a titanic battle at the Parc des Princes and Wasps' defeat of Toulouse in a Twickenham match that fascinated through its contrast between Wasps' blitz defence and Toulouse's jazz-band improvisation.

But the Heineken, whose rise to become the indispensable centre-piece of the European season has been one of the features of the scrum.com decade, has not been simply an Anglo-French concern.

Perhaps the two most emotional finals were those that saw a Dublin crowd rise to acclaim Ulster's victory in 1999 and Munster's win over Biarritz in 2006, concluding a pursuit that had echoes - happily minus any air crashes - of Manchester United's quest for the European Cup before 1968.

Because the Irish provinces meant something long before rugby was thought of, their ascendancy over the club game - where Limerick clubs Shannon and Garryowen have dominanted - has been more readily accepted than elsewhere.

Certainly more than in Wales, where there are no such natural regions and the club game was not so long ago by far the strongest in Britain.

A British or Anglo-Welsh league was still the cherished hope back in 1997 and pursuing it took enthusiastic Cardiff and reluctant Swansea out of their national competitions a year later for a season of friendlies against the Premiership clubs.

It came to nothing while joining that year's English boycott of the Heineken may have cost an outstanding Swansea team its best shot at the Heineken.

Almost every significant Welsh club apart from Cardiff, who failed on the pitch instead, had potentially terminal financial problems at some point during the decade.

It was the Heineken that finally did for them, exposing a lack of competitive edge against the best French and English competition, the death-knell probably quarter-final weekend in early 2001 when Swansea and Cardiff, vibrant in the early pool rounds, were summarily ejected by Leicester and Gloucester.

The regions as yet remain unproven and the appeal of the Celtic League unclear, with the execution of the Celtic Warriors after only a single season one of many stains on the Welsh Rugby Union's recent record.

Still, there is always somebody worse off. Scotland simply hasn't the resources to permit the conflicts that have dogged it over the past decade with its largely unloved professional provinces struggling to the point that Borders were axed in 2007, reflection of a broader shift in regional balance. Melrose's title in 1997 was the 22nd border victory in 25 national league seasons.

Since then only two Hawick victories have stemmed a tide of city dominance, with Glasgow Hawks claiming a hat-trick and Currie completing their remarkable rise from the junior ranks last year.

While the sub-national franchises of the Super 12/14 block the rest of southern hemisphere rugby from northern view, the Currie Cup maintains its hold on South African hearts and minds - one reason, some have argued, for its poor Super 14 record before this year.

Here Free State's breakthrough in the last three years has been the outstanding feature. In New Zealand Auckland have dominated the National Provincial Championship, but the historic lineage of the Ranfurly Shield retains its charm and first-time victories like Bay of Plenty in 2004 and North Harbour more recently sustain its romance.

In Australia, the axing this month of the eight-team national championship after a single season underlines its problem in building layers between city premierships and the Super 14 franchises.