Final day raises ongoing questions

Another AIB All-Ireland League campaign bites the dust and still the competition's formula comes under intense scrutiny and revision. Opinions and theories abound on the best way forward for the league, but nobody can come up with the ideal means of fitting the AIL snugly into a three-tiered system.

Some of the most influential club figures still won't accept even this, and labour under the illusion that one day they might usurp the provinces by competing in Europe. They can't, and they won't, unless there is a dramatic redrawing of the club map encompassing amalgamations. Some of the club derbies and occasions are great stuff, but the standard is a long way removed from the provincial arena, never mind as a breeding ground for the international team. Expanding the first division to 16 clubs (albeit to divide them into two conferences of eight) can only lower the threshold and therefore reduce the quality. If anything, the top flight should be reduced; not expanded.

If, say, there were 10 or 12 teams, and this entailed 22 or 18 games played on a home-and-away formula, then why not play one half without contracted players and one half with them?

Surely the clubs would be better off accepting this principle and therefore having games under the banner of the AIB League rather than some Mickey Mouse provincial development league? Had it been left to the clubs, there probably wouldn't have been a league to begin with. Nor would the concept of the top four play-offs been adopted. Shannon continually bleated about this all last season. But funnily enough, there wasn't a beep out of them this season, when they would have been only too glad to scrape into the semi-finals in fourth place.

Like others amongst the top six, they were only too pleased to have a meaning to the end of their campaign. And rightly so. Take the example of Buccaneers. The top four gave them a target that wouldn't have happened had they been safely clamouring along in mid-table anonymity.

Besides, the AIL is not a league per se anyway, in which everybody plays everybody else home and away. It is a championship, in which there is an imbalance brought about by having an odd number of matches. This is potentially critical in a division where home wins outnumber away wins by a ratio of two to one. Furthermore, this season the play-offs actually served to ensure that the best team in the country became champions. Without the playoffs, Garryowen would have been champions by virtue of having a points differential of +97 as against Constitution's +95.

As for the notion of having a separate competition for the top four with the league title already decided, well, you may as well play them in Timbuktoo for all the interest that would generate.

As it was, Saturday's final could not have attracted more than 9,000 spectators. It was unfortunate that the fixture backlog meant the final was put back to a bank holiday weekend. Nor did another all-Munster final help to persuade the Dublin rugby public to support the occasion.

Perhaps the final could have been switched to a Munster venue this season. It's a hard one to call. With the union's bureaucratic wing heavily Dublin-based, there is undoubtedly a tendency to bring everything to Dublin.

What it did demonstrate was the ever-increasing need for the union to develop a smaller, all-seater stadium with a capacity level in between Lansdowne Road and Donnybrook; whether it be a redeveloped Lansdowne Road with the national team moving to a new stadium or Croke Park.

OTHER factors, too, helped to distract from Saturday's final, like the sudden announcement of the latest Irish rugby player to test positive for an adverse finding coming at Friday tea-time. Talk about timing!

That the revelation should come all of three months after the player was tested following the European Cup final on January 30th suggests that the union had known of the adverse finding for at least two months, and that the revelation was forced upon them reluctantly by circumstances. Deduction? As usual when in doubt the union's first reaction seems to have been "tell 'em nothing" and hope it all goes away.

Recalling the three positive tests from last season, it's worth remembering that were it not for Neil Francis' claims of drug-testing in Irish rugby, and the unnecessarily swift and condemnatory response of the union within 48 hours, we might never have known of the ensuing adverse finding regarding a Five Nations player.

Whatever, about that, we almost certainly would never have known of the adverse finding from the 1997-98 season, also believed to involve an Ulster player, which had been dealt with by the not-so-independent tribunal. To this day, we still don't know what the adverse finding was, or why the player was cleared without sanctioning. The identities of the players involved in these two cases were never disclosed, resulting in a cloud of suspicion over Irish players which lasts to this day. As for the third case, which resulted in a reprimand for Tom Tierney, this has put the union in a bit of pickle by creating a benchmark for all future positive tests involving Irish players.

Given the Tierney case can be cited as a precedent, it will surely make it doubly difficult for the union to get tough.

Indeed, by all accounts, the current case involving another Ulster player is not deemed to be a serious offence, but is instead quite messy. In short, this could run and run, and end up in the courts.

In some respects, the union are deserving of sympathy, even if the cynically-minded will have noted their amazing volte face over a 48 hour period last week. On Wednesday, the IRFU were unable or unwilling to release any details of positive findings or statistical evidence of drug testing on Irish players. By Friday they could give us lock, stock and two smoking barrels.

One detects another tug-of-war between the amateurs who run the game and the professionals they employ to run it - affording them accountability without responsibility. Yet, in their defence, and before other sports adopt the high moral ground, clearly the union have done more to combat drugs in their game than any other sport in Ireland. A pity they took their time about doing it, and then took their time about telling us.

St Mary's, having successfully appealed for a deferment of their Leinster Senior Cup game against DLSP last Sunday when some of their players were participating in the Kinsale Sevens, will travel to Kilternan this evening (6.00) for the re-arranged second round tie. Last year's semi-finalists, Skerries, will entertain Dublin University in Holmpatrick (kick-off 6.00), while Wanderers are at home to Clontarf in Merrion Road (6.30). The draw for next weekend's quarter-finals will be made at lunchtime in the Leinster Branch offices.