Guardians of game should do just that

ON RUGBYWhile in Perpignan last weekend a Munster supporter, now living in Galway, received a phone call from his 16-year-old, rugby-mad son. "I'm reading in the papers dad that there's not going to be a Connacht rugby team," he said, "so what's the point in me playing the game anymore?"

And therein lies the rub. Honestly, the story is real, and there were probably more conversations like that in the west in the last few weeks. A coach of a Connacht senior club made the same point to his dad when asking rhetorically what two talented 21-year-old forwards in his first team had to aspire to if there was to be no professional team in the province.

Without a flagship team, it really does seem rather pointless to go on spreading the gospel. For new schools to take up the game, for children to take up the game at underage level, for mini-rugby coaches or youths' rugby coaches who clamber out of bed on wintry Sunday mornings and who are not rewarded with free junkets to Rome, or anywhere else, the incentive has been undermined. A few years in the wilderness, and the game in the west will simply die.

That, clearly, is what some of the IRFU hierarchy want. Take the developments of last week. In truth, nothing actually happened, save for more IRFU leaking and talking. Ironically, this may have served to belatedly galvanise Connacht's survival instincts, even if they'd first caught a whiff of the vultures circling at the end of last November. They'd interpreted the union's relative quietness since then as a sign the threat had abated. It is time to get pro-active.

The first shoots of this were evidenced in the estimated 5,500 spectators who attended the Pontypridd game last Saturday evening in Athlone, and the accompanying banners and protests. No doubt some of the IRFU powerbrokers will be surprised by the goodwill which exists toward Connacht as well as the hostility toward their proposal, but then living as they do in their ivory tower that is the Berkeley Court Hotel, unanswerable to anyone in the game, that's hardly surprising - any more than the way they first blithely overlooked the players' union, the IRUPA.

The IRUPA could be a powerful weapon in this saga, for there is now a very real threat to the livelihoods of 20-25 per cent of its membership - and this won't be just the Connacht players. This, after IRFU negotiators told some players it was their "duty" to come home from England. What price loyalty now? Most likely some will be relocated elsewhere and hence there will be a ripple effect into the other provinces. If inclined to present a united, militant front in a World Cup year, they could bring the IRFU to its knees.

It's unlikely their fellow administrators will, given the disbandment of Connacht comes with the hinted suggestion of an expansion to the other three squads. Or alternatively all four are trimmed down. Divide and conquer, the old IRFU reliable. In this way, the IRFU administrators are tapping into a strong element of self-interest and greed, and then all the while there's the threat of being ostracised if you don't toe the party line.

PUBLICLY, the Leinster cabal behind this move don't mention Connacht by name in IRFU statements or public utterances. But privately they say it's not personal, and to maintain their brilliant husbandry of the game, it's strictly business. Don't give them sentiment, give them figures.

Yet it is personal, and it is sentimental, as well as business. This course of action emanates from an inherent bigotry, or what Leinster coach Matt Williams has called "racism" towards Connacht - and little did he know. Moves were afoot against Connacht five years ago.

The circumstances which have led to the proposal to jettison Connacht are also the result of the IRFU's bad business. It is not Connacht's fault that the costs are exceeding income in running the game, yet they are being asked to carry the can for the union's financial conservatism.

But anger, emotional language and protests aren't going to save Connacht now. They need to come up with alternative suggestions. A public meeting has been called by the Friends of Connacht and arranged for tomorrow evening in the Radisson Hotel in Galway (8.0).

If 5,500 fans can attend a game, then surely there's at least 10,000 people who would give €100 or more each to establish a fund for its survival. An additional charge of €5 could be added to international match tickets. Private businesses could be approached. The IRFU could subvent Connacht to, say, €1 million instead of €2 million, if Connacht can find the means to come up with the rest as a semi-independent company.

It would ensure the development province still exists, and would be an interesting dry run in terms of giving the provinces more autonomy and perhaps the scope to bring further revenue streams into the game. But, utterly in control of Irish rugby, would the union be willing to grant such financial autonomy, even if it meant all four provinces surviving? Which in turn begs the question: is the IRFU's monopoly over the "business" of rugby in breach of the competition laws, never mind healthy?

What's worrying for Connacht is that their would-be hatchet men haven't allowed them the time or the scope to come up with alternate packages to save their skins. They have until the next committee meeting on January 23rd to state their case and then finally, on appeal so to speak, to the full council which the Connacht Branch have requested in early February.

Disbanding Connacht should be the last option, but it's being presented as the first. If the will was there to keep Connacht alive, then they would be, but it palpably isn't. Yet the self-styled management committee behind this short-sighted move don't own the game. They are merely its guardians. The future of the game rests more with the underage players and unpaid coaches and helpers at grassroots level, even in poor ould Connacht, than it does with the fat-cat administrators. And if they can't manage the game in all four provinces, they should vacate the premises and let somebody else do it.