Way, way back in its not-so-distant halcyon days, the All-Ireland League could attract a crowd of 15,500 to Thomond Park for a pivotal showdown between Shannon and Garryowen. The latter, inspired by a young Keith Wood, Brent Anderson and co, won en route to the 1991-92 league title. In next Saturday's opening round of the new campaign, the same fixture is unlikely to attract even a third of that attendance, given scarcely 1,500 witnessed a Friday night Munster Senior Cup semi-final between the same pair last weekend.

There are countless other examples of well-attended landmark days. When Saturday came and thousands flocked to AIL games, congregating in club bars up and down the country like sardines in cans to watch RTE's post-match highlights and results package.

That recent Munster Cup semi-final had taken place on a pleasant dry evening, yet the preceding Wednesday, on a cold, windy, sodden night, a crowd of 8-9,000 turned up at the same venue for the Ireland A-South Africa A match. Gone too are the days when the Limerick clubs travelled in thousands, but a good 4,000 Munster rugby supporters have been in touch with their provincial branch inquiring about tickets and travelling arrangements for Munster's potentially crunch European Cup pool match away to Newport on January 13th. In Ulster, anyone who had forecast four years ago a crowd of 12,000 for an interprovincial fixture at home to Munster would have been locked up and the key thrown away. There, a new breed of supporter has joined the provincial convert. A similar process has also begun in Leinster.

Basically, the Irish rugby supporter has become more discerning, and with more and more top-flight representative rugby on offer, the AIL has lost come of its cache. Indeed, increased public apathy is matched by increased player apathy. After four months of provincial and in some cases test rugby, the onset of the AIL doesn't exactly get their tickers going, understandably.

Pat Murray was Shannon's captain in the league's inaugural 1990-91 season, played in the first three of their four-in-a-row from 1995 to '98, while also playing on Munster's team in the fledging first two years of the European Cup, coached Shannon's fourth title winners, and then oversaw the relative decline as team Munster held sway.

"In the last two years, from a coaching point of view, it was like dealing with Mini Mouse. They were gone all the time. So you were trying to develop young guys but they were looking over their shoulders for when the contracted players returned, and if you were an amateur coach you were dealing with professional people when they came back to the club.

"It had its pluses as well but I remember for the first game two seasons ago as defending champions, also in December, we came together for the first time on the Tuesday before the first match in Ballymena," recalls Murray. "John Langford had been practising Munster's line-out calls with Woody for over three months, then he had two sessions with Mark McDermott. As they say, practice makes perfect. We travelled up to Ballymena on the Friday and had a chat. We had 10 Munster players involved and we got hockeyed (23-3)."

Last season, after Munster's highs, Shannon lost their AIL opener by 25-14 at a near empty Lansdowne Road. "It was hard to get up for it," several of them repeated, mantra-like, afterwards.

However, more significant in the longterm than Saturday's opening round of first division matches is next Friday's banging of heads between the full IRFU committee in Dublin. The topic for discussion, yet again., is the future format of the league.

In time-honoured tradition the clubs' AIL working party have been unable to agree on a structure and so it has been left to the IRFU to make the hard decision. At the last count there have been five different formats - and that's excluding the concept of the top four play-offs. The first division alone has fluctuated in size from nine, to 11, to 14, to 12 and now to 16 clubs this season.

Yesterday the committee members would have received a document marked private and confidential from the IRFU's rugby sub-committee, headed by the union's director of rugby Eddie Wigglesworth. A weighty tome, it charts in detail the increasing demands being placed on Ireland's top tier of professional rugby players.

With up to 27 representative games earmarked for the home-based test players clearly, given the ceiling of 30 or so games in a 12-month period recommended by the IRFU's fitness adviser Dr Liam Hennessy, that doesn't leave much room for the 15match AIB League programme.

Ideally the union are hoping to restrict internationally contracted players who play regularly for Ireland to roughly six to eight AIL games a season. Deep down, the clubs know it is a fait accompli, and some are even willing to bite the bullet and start the season earlier, while accepting the principle of being without contracted players for some weekends of the AIL.

Nonetheless, one of the provisions also outlined in the union missive to its committee members is the need for good-quality AIL clubs in each province to underpin the respective provincial teams, and for having as many non-international players as possible involved in the AIL.

A number of alternative league proposals have been outlined in the document: 1) an eight-team premiership, 2) a 10-team top flight, 2a) a 12-team first division, 3) a 16team top flight divided into two sections or 4) the status quo, a first division of 16 teams.

Some of the more established powers, such as first division ever-presents St Mary's, would like to see the top flight trimmed to eight clubs. As their president Paul Dean concedes, this is somewhat elitist, "but we have to have the availability of all our contracted players." St Mary's, it should be noted, have 14 contracted players.

However, this would run the risk of a Dublin-Munster carve-up and would also go against the rugby committee's recommendation that all the provinces be underpinned by first division clubs.

All the while, there is a fear that AIB may not renew their existing sponsorship of the league, reckoned to be in the region of £200,000 a year. Currently in the fourth year of its sponsorship, and the first of two optional years after extending its initial three-year deal, AIB are said to be mindful of the Celtic Cup starting next season.

Their managing director Kevin Kelly maintains that AIB's sponsorship of the league is in keeping with their policy of "staying in touch with the grass roots", though he adds the proviso that "reduced attendances are a concern". It is a pro-active sponsorship, which extends beyond their formal arrangement, and entails merchandising, taking tables at pre-match dinners, and generally providing them with a facility to utilise their regional and local branches.

Another vexed issue, being examined by a regulatory sub-committee of the union which is expected to make its recommendations soon, is the notion of reimbursing clubs for player involvement at provincial or test level, for nurturing contracted players. Easier said than done though. "One of the many questions raised by this proposal is what degree it was the school or the club who helped develop the player?" said Philip Browne, the IRFU chief executive. "What happens if he joined the club only in the last year or two from another club? It is a very complex issue. You can't spread the jam thickly."

Aside from the estimated annual outlay of over £7 million to fund the professional side of the Irish game, the annual IRFU outlay under its Clubs of Ireland scheme, designed to foster under-age teams and coaching, comes to around £1.1 million, but the annual budget for the rugby development department headed by Wigglesworth is over £4 million, of which at least a third is spent on the clubs.

Yet encouraging clubs to continue nurturing and developing talent is a crucial conduit in the three-year structure. Playing numbers are dropping, though they are increasing at underage level according to Wigglesworth, who believes that this decline has bottomed out.

"We have to recognise the new reality which, because of the cost implications of the professional sector, makes it incumbent for a whole range of reasons that the greater marketing and strategic planning has to go into the professional side of the game. In saying that, the IRFU recognises the need for a vibrant and healthy domestic league, which . . . has given the dynamic to the club structure.

"That is why the union did not go into a 22-game Welsh-Scottish League proposal. For many reasons we want to retain a strength, vitality and credibility in the domestic league structure by having the contracted players play in it. In addition to a minimum of 14 professional games, that leaves room for 15 domestic games and we need the non-international player playing those games. We would have a full season with that structure."

So where does this leave the clubs?

"We're just going to have to go back to our amateur days," says Pat Murray. "If that means being without our contracted players for some league games then so be it. At least this would give a window of opportunity to young players who'll know that the likes of Mick Galwey can only be around for five or six club games. You've got to turn a negative into a positive. As the saying goes, if things don't change they'll stay the same and things are changing, so it's up to the clubs to change with them, or they're goosed."