Pyramid structure key to success

Just when you think everything in the Irish rugby garden is rosy, or at least getting that way, something happens to remind you that the game's old capacity for taking aim at its two feet and unerringly hitting the target remains undimmed.

Next Friday in Ravenhill looks like constituting the penultimate A interprovincial of the season. Leinster have finished their A programme and only Connacht and Munster are keen to renew hostilities at this level in conjunction with the second half of the senior interprovincial championship. It's not a huge issue in itself, but it's plain daft all the same.

The IRFU and everyone else in the game here should regard Irish rugby as a pyramid, with the Irish international team as its apex, followed by the four provinces, followed by the clubs. The bottom line with regard to the continuation of the A interpros over six series is: What's best for Irish rugby and what's best for the players themselves?

It's quite simple really, and playing six A inteprovincial matches is eminently preferable to half that or less, with the majority of the A players reverting to Mickey Mouse provincial club competitions. No disrespect, but that's what they are.

Apparently though, the Leinster clubs want those players not in the senior squad back in their embrace. So too, it seems, do the Ulster clubs. Their need for some sort of competitive structure at this time of year no doubt has substance, if only to lure a few members into the club bar.

However, given the All-Ireland League is a full three months away, their need should be considered secondary to the needs of the provinces and their fringe players. Were the clubs not creating a false transfer market their need for money mightn't be so acute. There are, by all accounts, two under-19 players who reputedly received around £8,000 in signing-on fees from Dublin clubs this summer.

The net result of the clubs' needs superseding those of the provinces is that Connacht and Munster will play four A interprovincials games each, while Leinster and Ulster will play only two, when all of them should ideally have played six each. Interestingly, the Munster and Connacht provincial set-ups are taking a firmer line, with Munster trying to create alternative fixtures to keep the A squads ticking over.

In general, the A interpros haven't been used as well as they should have been at all. If they established as part of a double-header always to follow the senior games, and were run as an A championship in their own right, complete with bonus points scoring system, they would serve an invaluable purpose.

It was interesting to note how many in the estimated 3,000 attendance at Donnybrook last Friday evening stayed on to watch a lower quality but free-running, free-scoring and enjoyable A fixture.

Instead though, these A games been shunted around the fixture list as if they were as desirable as a drunk at a christening. Sometimes they take place the next day, as was the case in the Munster-Leinster fixture. Other times - and this is worse - they kick off beforehand, as will be the case in Ravenhill next Friday evening.

This largely defeats the purpose of having them. No provincial coach in his right mind is going to risk playing any of his seven replacements on the senior squad in an A game beforehand. Hence, the greatest risk of injury to many full-time and part-time contracted players will be splinters in their rear. Painful, and stupid, for it is a rather wasteful way of investing money on professional or semi-professional players.

Admittedly, the timing of the Moroccan fixtures earlier this month against all four provinces didn't help, nor has the timing of the four games between the Irish provinces and the Scottish district sides over last weekend and this. Apparently, the Scots wouldn't go along with Irish requests for games fractionally earlier in the season, which would have been invaluable as interprovincial warm-up games.

They have served to disrupt the inteprovincial series, as will the two rounds of European games that first sandwich rounds four and five of the interpros, and then rounds five and six. All of which perhaps made it logistically difficult to maintain the A interpros over six rounds. But not impossible, and with only 15 Leinster and Ulster players starting games over the next few weeks, is still eminently favourable to the alternative.

The alternative is that full-time and part-time provincial players will either be sitting on the bench for all or the majority of senior interpros, or else will be playing for their clubs in provincial development leagues or club championships or whatever they're called now. No matter their names, they are still inferior to A interpros.

And as sure as night follows day, at some stage in the European campaigns (say, the last weekend in October and the fifth round of European matches) one or more of the provinces will find themselves with a rash of injuries in one position.

By the looks of things, this could have more serious repercussions for Leinster and Ulster. Instead of then promoting a player who has played, say, six A intepros and has thus been continuously involved in the provincial set-ups, it could well be that they'll have to call up a player who has reverted to glorified junior club rugby for two months.

Again, thinking of that pyramid, there's a couple of simple questions to be asked here. Which is best for the development of the player: remaining at least in part within the provincial set-up, or returning to localised club leagues? And should the system be working for the provincial set-ups, with the European competitions also in mind, or the clubs, with the AIL fully three months away?

The answers would seem to be blindingly obvious.