Clubs battling to lift ailing League

THIS weekend 48 AIB League teams will kick-off the new club season but issues away from the pitch continue to overshadow events on it.

The All-Ireland League has been ailing ever since the advent of professionalism just over a decade ago with the provincial teams, and subsequently their academies, relegating the clubs to the third and then fourth rung of the game’s ladder.

Two years ago the IRFU’s suggestion that the clubs revert to a provincial structure was shot down and the same fate awaited a plan to streamline the top division from 16 to as little as eight or 10 clubs last May.