IRFU should see strong Connacht as a positive

ON RUGBY:The Westerners' gutsy and skilful win over Leinster doesn't dispel fears of a two-tier provincial set-up, but it's given them a serious jolt

THERE WILL be much gnashing of teeth within the Leinster squad and further beyond in the wake of Sunday evening's sun-drenched surprise in the Sportsground, but the night was as much about what Connacht did as what Leinster didn't do. And most of all, in the broader scheme of things and provided Leinster respond as they're capable of doing in their pivotal Heineken Cup opener next Saturday in Edinburgh, you could argue it was a good night for Irish rugby as well as the Magners League.

With Leinster and Munster running up half-centuries in the early throes of the campaign, and Connacht and Ulster leaking some hefty tallies, the League had begun to assume a decidedly two-tiered slant, à la the French Top 14, especially in Ireland as the quartet assumed normal positions at either end of the table. Connacht's gutsy, sleeves-rolled-up and skilful win doesn't dispel those fears at a stroke, but at the very least it's given them a serious jolt.

Ulster will have viewed the events of Sunday night with trepidation and no doubt others within the higher echelons of the IRFU (not only with Ulster ties or blazers) will feel likewise. Ever since there has been talk of shifting the goalposts in the interpros back to the mid-90s so as to ringfence the Big Three in the Heineken Cup and exclude Connacht, there has been a scarcely disguised feeling that the IRFU favour such a set-up.

This approach has historical and political roots along with the underrepresentation of Connacht at committee level. You don't even have to refer to the Union's attempts to disband Connacht to appreciate that.

Reading between the lines of the latest, updated presentation of the IRFU's Strategic Planmerely reaffirmed as much. There's scarcely any reference to Connacht save, by intimation, the hardly inspiring goal of an Irish province reaching two semi-finals of the Challenge Cup. Why not have, as a mission statement, the desire to have all four provinces in the Heineken Cup? It is actually eminently more achievable and would be much more beneficial.

It's true these have become a worrying couple of years for Ulster. Without the Charlie McCreevy tax rebate, they are effectively competing in the Guinness Premiership market. They frittered away the post-1999 years and now don't have the financial resources of Leinster or Munster. But the bottom line is four strong provinces are better than two, yet there seems to be an obsession within the IRFU to keep Connacht down, if only as a dubious means of keeping Ulster up.

Along with the club game, the most underrepresented and underused arm of Irish rugby has been Connacht, especially with regard to their best resource: game time. Lots of it. The play a total of 18 Magners League games a year, the same as the other provinces, and a minimum of six games in the vastly underappreciated European Challenge Cup. A genuine, more level playing field in the scrap for Heineken Cup qualification would be no harm and a one-year detour to the Challenge Cup is not the abyss Ulster and the IRFU appear to believe it is.

Wasps, Sale and Harlequins have all won it as a means of relaunching themselves in recent years. And it's interesting to note Connacht's opponents next Friday, Dax, won their second Basque derby at the weekend over Biarritz and sit above Munster's opening opponents, Montauban, as well as Leinster's Heineken Cup pool rivals Castres.

Similarly, Connacht's visitors on Friday week, London Irish, are a point above Sale and ahead of Harlequins and Wasps, the provinces' Heineken Cup rivals from the Premiership.

As Michael Bradley highlighted after Sunday's win, had Ian Keatley, Seán Cronin and Fionn Carr not been recruited over the summer from the fringes of the Leinster and Munster squads, they would probably have been playing for their clubs on Saturday, which was not meant to be disrespectful to the AIB League. In actual fact, Keatley was at his sister's wedding on Saturday, though his performance demonstrated he had clearly followed Bradley's diktat to stay dry and be home in bed by 10pm.

And there's more where they came from. Keatley is an Under-20 World Cup contemporary of Danny Cipriani and James Hook, and Irish rugby is desperately looking to unearth outhalves, yet as the case of the Irish Under-20 World Cup finalists of 2004 highlights, a recurring source of frustration within Irish rugby is the slowness with which young players break through.

In truth, with more rotational selection policies, Leinster, Munster and Ulster have all made strides in that department this season. Leinster had nine academy products in Sunday's match 22. Yet Leinster have won four under-20 interpro titles in a row (Connacht pushed them harder than anyone this year) and simply cannot fast-track all of them. Three of Blackrock's six tries in their 41-27 win over Shannon were scored by Shane Monaghan, who, like Keatley and Keith Earls, was a member of Ireland's Under-20 Grand Slam team of two seasons ago.

This is where Connacht could come in. Were more talented young indigenous players repatriated to the West by both the Union as well as Leinster and Munster (occasional appearances in the Heineken Cup wouldn't harm that ideal), Connacht could become a finishing school as opposed to a developmental province - a term that has all sorts of unflattering connotations.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, Ireland have lost 10 of their last 14 Tests, and the win column hardly reads like a heavyweight Who's Who of the global game: Namibia, Georgia, and Italy and Scotland at home.

Declan Kidney and his impressive brains trust may yet reverse this trend and keep the relative golden era alive until the 2011 World Cup, but Irish rugby has been relying on the same core group of players for years and acutely needs an injection of fresh talent, not least as far as 2015 is concerned.

Keatley, Cronin, Carr and company represent a belated trickle. None of the Sanzar unions would fritter away one of their Super 14 franchises like this.

Were the trickle to become a flood, the beneficiaries wouldn't just be Connacht. Irish rugby would benefit too. Enormously.