As the All-Ireland League kicks off, Gerry Thornley talks to some of its most loyal servants about what makes it still a worthwhile competition

The player Gary Leslie: Dungannon

In AIL terms, he's a legend. In 11 seasons with Dungannon, Gary Leslie has missed only eight games, making a record 125 league appearances. He turns 34 in December, but he approaches his 12th campaign as eagerly as he did any other.

He joined Dungannon on the eve of the inaugural league campaign in August 1991, winning the Division Two title that season. It's been a rollercoaster ride since, with three promotions and two relegations, while the highlight came when Dungannon became the first Ulster club to win the league two seasons ago.

Yet, there he was last Tuesday evening, preparing to end his working day as a factory manager in Moy Park and go training almost next door in Stevenson Park for the umpteenth time.

"There are two ways of looking at it at my age; either I hang up my boots and take to the golf course, or I carry on. It's not good for my back swing, but playing rugby is still more rewarding. And we have a new coach (Andy Earl), with a new perspective, which is quite refreshing.

"I've been quite lucky. I've always been a very quick healer and we've always had a very good backroom staff at Dungannon. It might also be something to do with my pigheadedness. I don't like watching matches," he admits, adding with a laugh: "I notice a change in my character during the summer when I don't have tackle bags to hit."

Having played with Ulster for seven seasons he has glimpsed the professional player's life, but, with a wife and three young girls, he decided to put his working career first.

"I made my intentions pretty clear. My wife (Dawn) and I discussed it, but I couldn't take the gamble even on a one-year sabbatical because then you go back to work you lose out in the pecking order. I've seen a lot of boys like Jan (Cunningham), Topper (James Topping) and Boat (Gary Longwell) go the professional route and it's benefited them.

"When they come out of the game, they mightn't have a career path to fall back on - though maybe they'd have enough money from the game to start a business. I wasn't good enough to earn that kind of money."

Playing in every game of Ulster's European Cup-winning season provided some last hurrah to his provincial career. Then, three seasons ago, Dungannon's star-studded outfit elevated the league to a level which is unlikely to be seen again. "The scale of it was different, in terms of the friendships. The supporters were the local Dungannon contingent who'd supported the club through thick and thin. The AIL final was more an extension of the Dungannon family."

AIL fixtures have become less social, although he still cites the hospitable welcomes in Limerick and reels off the names of many of the city's rugby pubs. "It's become a young man's game, but the intensity is still there, no matter what side you play, and in Limerick especially you still meet dogged defence and ferocious tackling. The league will definitely survive. For players who want to make the grade up, they need to have high-intensity games and, with the greatest respect the provincial leagues, don't really deliver that any more. That talent needs to be nurtured."

And as for himself?

"What I've said to my wife and friends is that I will play for Dungannon as long as they want me to play. If they want to bring along a young prop, I'll help him to develop and then step aside. I'll keep playing as long as they want me, whether that will be next year or the year after I don't know."

Either way, there'll be lots of time for stickball.

The coach Brent Pope: St Mary's College

who'd have thought it, but Brent Pope has hung around long enough to be the first division's longest-serving coach. After five years with Clontarf, he's embarking upon his fourth as St Mary's coach, and can also recall those misty-eyed playing days when a crowd approaching 20,000 compelled St Mary's to move their title decider with Young Munster to Lansdowne Road. Those were the league's days in the sun, alright.

"It was my second year over here and it was a fantastic league then, it really was. I remember going down to Limerick for derbies and great days out when 10,000 attended. It's a shame that some of that is lost. We're playing Shannon in our opener and if it's a nice day, there'll only be 10 men and a dog there. You'd like to think that there'd be a couple of thousand - it's still a good game.

"People have got to watch out," says Pope. "There's been blueprints of failure, one of which is New Zealand to a degree. Club rugby went under a few years ago and people still say it left a huge hole for them to fill. If you get to the stage where there isn't a meaningful club league and a good 23-year-old comes along who hasn't come from the school scene or the academies, then you're saying the Trevor Brennans of this world might as well give up. There'll be no competition for them to aspire to.

"The saddest thing I've seen in professional rugby is that some guys are being paid to do weights. You don't take up golf to sit in the clubhouse and wait for somebody to let you on at the 16th.

"The game used to be tougher, more like trench warfare. It was more of a man's game, but now it's more free-flowing, it's a more athletic game, and more multi-skilled."

Accordingly, coaches have had to reinvent themselves, and he constantly studies videos from all over the world.

"A coach who takes a few years out would find it very hard now. Defensively it's now so influenced by rugby league - it's just about rugby league with the lineouts. The lineouts have changed, too, with lifting and variations, whereas in my day you had about five stock lineouts. You threw it to X and he either got it or he didn't."

Pope reckons he's not as gruff as he used to be, and that an AIL coach has "got to be a wee bit more softly, softly. Players are a more tender breed now."

There's much more emphasis on what he calls "academy-type, pre-season work" and with contracted players coming and mostly going, it's harder to build team patterns and team spirit. All in all, coaching is both more difficult and challenging.

"I'm excited about trying to develop young players from within the club more, with Peter Smyth coaching the under-20s. St Mary's are trying to be like Shannon, in that we're trying to produce our own players and get to the stage, in about three years' time, where we don't have to play any of our contracted players.

"I think that's what ultimately every club in the country is trying to do. And if they're not, they should be."

The administrator Wally Morrisey - director of rugby, Cork Constitution

It ain't easy running even a semi-professional AIL club these days. At the top end of the tree, to compete in the first division costs a club about €400,000 per season, roughly double what it was back in the mid or early-1990s. And gate receipts and bar "take" are but a pittance compared to those halcyon days.

"Most clubs are relying on sponsorship to make up the difference," says Wally Morrissey, Cork Constitution's director of rugby for the past six seasons. A former player with the club in the 1960s, he became involved at committee level in their centenary year, the second season of the AIL, and went on to become first-team manager and chairman of selectors, as well as president of the club, so he has as good an insight as anyone.

"Rugby costs have gone up, too," he adds, in reference to inflation, the increase in away matches, and travel costs. In one regard at least, the clubs have had to cut their cloth to suit their measure.

"Most clubs are only paying win bonuses now. There's no longer the daft money that clubs were spending back in the 90s."

The advent of an under-20 competition, albeit regionalised into three conferences, has added to costs, and despite being one of the top clubs under the IRFU's Clubs of Ireland scheme, fulfilling 86 per cent of the union's criteria, last season Con received less than €40,000,while their AIL travelling allowance amounted to €42,000.

Morrisey points out that last season the union's expenditure on the game was €36 million from an income of €38 million. Of this, the contributions to AIL club rugby was €1 million, with a further €1.5 million under the Clubs of Ireland scheme. By contrast, the union spent €6 million on payments to the national team and coaches, with a further €337,000 towards squad sessions. A further €5.25 million was spent on provincial players and coaches, and a further

€4 million on their travel costs.

Given the provinces are now competing for the same advertising and corporate clients, Morrisey's task has got even harder. "We have to work twice as hard to run a match programme and generate an awful lot of advertising," he says.

Clubs have also had to become more inventive, generating income through race nights, club draws, lottos and so forth. As long as there are volunteers to do the legwork - ranging from fundraising to coaching the under-8s - clubs will make ends meet, but as Morrisey admits, active membership is dwindling almost everywhere.

"We run a J1, J2 and under-20 sides, but we no longer have a J3 side, though we're reconsidering it. People are walking away from club rugby. They're not prepared to put in the effort. Everything is being left to a handful of people."

Morrisey would like to see the clubs given the incentive of "qualifying to compete in the Celtic League".

The IRFU's reward scheme to clubs and schools for producing representative players is as Morrisey puts it "peanuts - a token gesture". Last season, Con received just €2,500 through this bonus scheme, their share for developing Conor Mahony.

As for finishing top of the first division and then reaching the play-off final, Con earned IR£25,000 in prize money, though here Morrisey can cite the words of the club treasurer in stating that because of sharing the receipts from a home semi-final and the costs of playing in a final, "the further you go in the AIL, the more it costs you".

Pruning the divisions, with set numbers from each provinces, would lower costs and improve standards, maintains Morrisey, though for all its ailments he says there's "still a bit of excitement" about the dawn of a new AIL campaign. "At the end of the day club rugby is the grass roots of the game. The game itself wouldn't survive without it."