Kiely's pub in Donnybrook on Saturday nights used to be a sort of melting pot for the gathering of rugby folk after a day's AIL action. Those were the league's halcyon days, when a hush descended over sardine-canned crowds in club bars for the TV-packaged highlights at about 5 p.m., back in the days when the AIL had a certain novelty about it, when RTE and the print media really did give a damn.
Last Saturday night there were comparatively few rugby patrons in Kiely's, and of those a couple of one-time diehards (a former first division player and another noted supporter whose club had played at home last Saturday) admitted they hadn't been to a game last Saturday. Instead, on a sunny, spring day, they closed the curtains and watched Bath versus Bristol in the Zurich Premiership on Sky Sports. Pass the bucket.
If an English Premiership game was taking place on a Saturday afternoon in the back garden I wouldn't be inclined to even open the curtains. Granted this betrays an unhealthy bias unbecoming of your rugby correspondent. But I can't help it.
Maybe it's the ingrained Sky hyperbole. Maybe it's the way the English club owners want to pluck the best, from the Celts especially, and in return have larger slices of the European cake to help pay these inflated wage bills, or that they grossly overplay their players, or that they don't always honour contracts, (witness Irish players who successfully took London Irish to court). Maybe it's the lack of balanced debate in the English media, with the club owners portrayed as visionary knights in shining armour.
Maybe it's the appalling vista of English club owners gaining control of the English game, devaluing the Six Nations by compressing the championship into some end-of-season six-week period or, the ultimate, ever-present threat, refusing to release players.
Alas, the sense of duty to go along to a club game, especially on a sunny Saturday afternoon, is clearly fading. The former player spoke of the changed times in clubs, with all sense of loyalty being eroded; modern players who respond to being dropped by refusing to play for second XVs and join another club in the close-season. Another ripple effect of all this is that there are fewer and fewer volunteers, once the cornerstone of the club game. Indeed, in the English club game, there must hardly be an unpaid volunteer left in the Premiership.
The thought of two one-time AIL loyalists watching Bath v Bristol had a particularly sour resonance for this writer in that it has unnerving echoes of its football counterpart. The FAI National League was all but consumed by a bigger monster across the water and an even more disinterested media.
When there's a feel-good momentum about a competition it almost becomes self-perpetuating; as was the case with the AIL after its inception in the early 1990s, or latterly the European Cup. Negatives are overlooked and positives accentuated.
The flip side, needless to say, is that when there's a bad vibe toward a competition it too becomes self-perpetuating, or perhaps more to the point, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Only the negatives are accentuated. In such a climate, the positives are overlooked. It's like the stench of impending relegation within a club, you can almost reach out and touch it.
The club game has felt the big squeeze. More than most, I think, Irish sporting supporters love to go with the flow. It's the big-occasion factor, the presence of the TV cameras. Our two Kiely's friends who gave the AIL a miss last Saturday would, given two tickets to a Munster match in Limerick or Cork, or for that matter the forthcoming semi-final in Lille, probably incur the extra cost to make the trips for those Munster games.
Undoubtedly, the European Cup has broadened the scope of the pan-European game unlike any other development in decades. For reaching new parts and all that, it has surpassed even the Six Nations. And undoubtedly, the standard is way higher than club fare and has filled a gaping void underneath international level.
Yet there's a glib assertion doing the rounds that standards in the AIL have hit an all-time low. Rubbish. Indeed, ironically, last Saturday appears to have been one of the best the AIL has produced. Take the Cork Constitution-St Mary's game. Three Lions hopefuls, nine internationals and a host of representative players. In a game that ebbed and flowed, punctuated by six tries, at least four of them high-quality ones, had there been a full house and TV cameras it would have been as good an advertisement as the league has ever had.
In their differing ways, Shannon-Galwegians, Lansdowne-Ballymena and undoubtedly, for best AIL comeback ever, Terenure-Garryowen, seem to have been pretty good too. The penny seems to have dropped with regard to bonus points, and 43 tries were scored in eight Division One games. This average was maintained throughout the divisions with 122 tries at an average of over five per game.
It helps, for sure, that all the big guns are appearing weekly for their clubs, though no sooner than they get some momentum going the Munster-Rest of Ireland fixture and Munster's Euro semi-final will derail the AIL again. And if Munster reach the final on May 19th, scheduled AIL semi-final day, then fixture chaos will ensue, while probably scuppering the Munster clubs again.
To avoid this in future, the clubs will have to bite the bullet and start the AIL earlier. Especially next season, given Ireland's anticipated 11 internationals and the advent of the Celtic League.
For the moment the clubs are enjoying a few rare Saturdays in the sun, but as even onetime diehards realise, it looks like a last hurrah of sorts.
gthornley@irish-times.ie
