ON RUGBY/Gery Thornley: A glance  at the AIB League tables yesterday morning and you could almost be forgiven for closing your eyes and taking a step back in time to the All-Ireland League's halcyon days of the early and mid-1990s. There Shannon stand once more, top of the table, closely followed by Garryowen and Cork Constitution. Between them, this trio of Munster heavyweights have won eight of the AIL's 11 league crowns.

They are followed by five Leinster clubs vying for the fourth and last play-off place. Thus, despite the greater drain on the bigger clubs with the more sizeable contingent of professionals, on the surface it would almost seem as if nothing has changed.

Of course, due to the squeeze from the national and provincial set-ups above the clubs, things have changed utterly. It's just that the standard bearers have reacted quickest. But you don't have to scratch the surface too hard. At one AIL game earlier in the season against UCD at Temple Hill, Cork Constitution's official gate receipts were £68.

Granted, true rugby supporters will still attend the big AIL games; witness the 2,500-3,000 at the Cork Con-Shannon tie the week before last. Nonetheless, this still falls well short of the 8,000 capacity crowds which would once have been commonplace at Temple Hill for a Con-Shannon game. Thus last Saturday week's take of €24,000 at the turnstiles would previously have been in the region of €64,000.

Such drastic shortfalls in annual gate receipts (now no more than glorified pocket money for the clubs) are widespread, yet the cost of running a first division club is, in the case of both Con and Garryowen, reckoned to be in excess of €380,000. Garryowen have always been one of the more progressive AIL clubs and both predictably and understandably Frank Hogan, a mainstay of the club, talks bitterly of the club game's decline.

"The clubs' thunder has been stolen totally by the provincial set-up, which was funded by money that should have been made available to the clubs," claims Hogan. "Gate receipts don't exist, people are walking away from the game and the standard of football has fallen significantly. That's very discouraging for young players coming into the game because they're not getting the chance to play with the really good players.

"Realistically, rugby clubs have only themselves to blame for where they have landed themselves," admits Hogan, "because it was quite clear that unless we did something seven years ago the provincial scene was going to take us out. But we couldn't agree on anything."

However, pining for the good old days and clinging to the hope that the clubs could one day represent Ireland in the Heineken European Cup is futile, and it's ironic that for all Hogan's pessimism, Garryowen may again have shown something of a lead in launching their own academy for a three-year trial run.

Nothing prepared Irish rugby for the advent of professionalism and the relative good health of the game nowadays than the AIL. And nothing prepared the provinces, and especially Munster over the last few years, quite like the AIL. It was the Munster clubs who gave the AIL its extra competitive edge, and who in turn fostered the winning mentality which the province took on to the interpros and Europe. A further erosion of the club base could have serious repercussions.

In underpinning the provinces and in turn the national set-up, the clubs still have a huge role to play. Witness the run-outs David Wallace had for Garryowen on two of the last three weekends, and, say, Rob Henderson for Young Munster last weekend, not to mention all the fit fringe players who would otherwise be idle.

Futhermore, the IRFU and the four provinces cannot take care of the game's recruitment drive without the help of the clubs. The clubs know their way around the schools and junior scenes, and because of the IRFU Academy's age profile, all late developers miss the cut there. The clubs constitute their best hope.

As things stand, the IRFU are analysing the views of Ireland's senior clubs on the future structure of the AIL. Though the leading clubs want change immediately, the union (mindful of potential legal action were the promotion and/or relegation goalposts moved in mid-season), want the existing 16-team, three-division format to remain in place next season.

Cork Con's director of rugby Wally Morrissey, who is also a prominent figure on the First Division Clubs' Association, says: "Some of the leading clubs, including my own, would like to see a two-division format of 12 or 13 teams with the rest reverting to regional rugby, although that would be for them to decide."

This proposal envisages one club from Cork, three from Limerick, four or five from Leinster, two from Connacht and two from Ulster. "This couldn't be decided on the basis of one season, but on a merit basis over five years or so," adds Morrissey, not unreasonably.

But already the pitfalls are obvious. Who's to decide the make-up of the top flight and by what criteria? To maintain the geographical spread as a means of underpinning the provinces, how would the relegation/promotion system actually operate? Morrissey also argues for moving the under-21 international championship into one, fortnight-long slot, and for the scrapping of the A internationals, as they're no longer development games. He says this would make it more feasible to run the AIL series on international match weekends. All the Six Nations now compete at A level and so the Irish management are unlikely to share this view.

Aside from a trimmed-down first division and top-four play-offs with their Scottish counterparts and an All-Ireland Cup, the leading clubs would also like greater financial investment from the IRFU into a semi-professional first division.

It will be interesting to see if the report on the IRFU's finances by Deloitte & Touche, which the union initiated, will help free up some additional investment into the club game, although the union's coffers are limited.

There are no obvious answers. The AIL probably isn't as troubled as is generally made out, the sense of foreboding brought about more by the unrealistic highs of not so long ago than the existing realities. Most probably the club game is not that far away from finding its proper niche.