Club versus province crux must be sorted

THE AIB League has its knockers but it also has its adherents and without it one is left to wonder just where club rugby in this country would be.

Not that the clubs themselves are happy with the situation, indeed far from it. Dr Noel Walsh, president of Cork Constitution, spoke for just about everybody on Saturday when he criticised the IRFU for fixing interprovincial matches which may or not be competitive for the weekends of league matches, thus depriving them of key players At the same time, Gerry O’Loughlin, chairman of Shannon, lauded AIB for their support of the league while wishing the IRFU might do the same. Just as attendances at the games themselves have fallen drastically, so, too, have the number of companies prepared to fork out for a table at these corporate functions. They see the public interest in the event waning with almost every series of matches and react accordingly.

As a consequence, club finances are parlous in the extreme even if most are keeping their heads above water and somehow continuing to run thriving under-age sections. Should that ever collapse, however, one wonders where the players of the future will come from It is difficult in the extreme to see any way the league could be restored even close to the eminence it enjoyed through the 1990s. Things have changed, changed utterly, with the advent of the professional game and a three-tier structure that works extremely well at international and provincial level but is something of a disaster where the clubs are concerned.