HEADY days indeed – Newport Gwent Dragons will be in the Heineken Cup automatically for the first time for six years next season and they have a chance of making the Magners League play-offs at the first attempt next month.

Nobody, not even their most ardent fan, would have predicted such an outcome when the season got under way nearly eight months ago.

But that is the reality after one glorious home win after another – their away form remains an ongoing challenge – their seven tries, all by the backs, in a demolition job on Edinburgh the latest on Sunday.

That followed similar mighty victories over the Ospreys and Munster, making it three in a row, and a shirt-sleeved crowd of more than 7,000 basked not just in the sun but in the glow of a wonderful attacking display by the Dragons.

How the players have responded to new ideas from new young coaches, Darren Edwards (backs) and Colin Charvis (forwards), setting them new targets and giving them a licence to thrill.

The atmosphere and spirit at the Dragons has always been good, it’s often had to be in adversity, but now it really has flourished as the players have responded to their new environment, buoyed by splendid new facilities at last, thanks to an agreement with the new Newport High School, and encouraged to go out and express themselves by head coach Paul Turner, Edwards and Charvis.

Their feats are being recognised on a wider scale, with pundits queuing up to praise them and acknowledge their achievements, Stuart Davies, the ex-Wales No 8, the most recent, saying they are the team of the season.

International recognition hasn’t come yet, not much anyway, only Luke Charteris and Dan Lydiate included this season and even Lydiate was overlooked for the Six Nations, though in the Wales squad.

But it surely will, and in the near future as well. National coach Warren Gatland is a regular at Rodney Parade – he insists on telling me he rarely misses – and on Sunday he was there again, this time with colleague Rob Howley.

He was particularly impressed by three-try Will Harries and, oddly enough considering all the tries were scored by backs, though he is essentially a forwards coach, by two members of the Dragons pack in Charteris and the emerging Hugh Gustafson.

But you can bet that before long Harries, Jason Tovey and perhaps teenager Toby Faletau will be making their mark at a higher level.

Should they feature against South Africa in the special Millennium Stadium match on June 5 or on the tour to New Zealand which follows?

That’s a difficult one, for as Turner said last week, New Zealand is not particularly the place you want to go for obvious reasons, but these players have flourished after being thrown in, as it were, by the Dragons, so why not with Wales?

Lydiate is a definite Wales star of the future – ask Gatland – and it’s a crying shame that another injury has forced him out of the running for the summer internationals.

But if he returns next season in the same way that he started the Ospreys game after the Six Nations he will be in the Welsh team sooner rather than later.

One international coach who observed a Wales training session and took one look at Lydiate in action pretty quickly said to Gatland: “Who on earth is that?” Enough said.

For my money, Tovey is a better player than rival Dan Biggar, more rounded with greater variety to his game, though he has less experience at No 10 than the Ospreys youngster.

Harries has already made it for the Wales sevens team and he could go one step higher on the evidence of his blistering form which has produced eight tries in seven appearances.

Fellow wing Aled Brew is already on Gatland’s radar, a powerful runner who can be explosive with a real turn of pace, though he also happens to be sidelined at the moment.

Now the Dragons head for their biggest derby of the season against Cardiff Blues before a jam-packed Rodney Parade crowd on Friday night, when both teams are bang in form.

It should be a belter with the Blues on fire and, unlike the Dragons, winning games away for fun, and by wide margins, too, against Ulster, Newcastle and the Scarlets.

New Zealand import Casey Laulala looks some player and Jamie Roberts is responding in a potent partnership while Xavier Rush remains in his element, the true catalyst and a player the Blues will miss heavily next season.

But most of their form players are imports, a stark contrast to the Dragons who included 14 Welsh qualified players in their starting line-up against Edinburgh, surely the way to go in future.

Everything in their garden seems to be blooming and while it’s going to be a tall order against the Blues, especially with their injury list growing again, take nothing away from what they have achieved in their best season for years.