On Rugby: The four proud provinces of Ireland? That could be a good one in years to come, or will the IRFU vultures currently circling Connacht commission Phil Coulter to update his ditty to the 'three proud provinces of Ireland'? In the interests of accuracy if not, eh, harmony.
Of course the union have to address an ever-worsening annual operating deficit. Not to do so would be bad husbandry. Then again, the projected losses of €4 million this year and almost €7 million for next year must be at least partly due to the IRFU's own bad husbandry to begin with.
It's certainly not Connacht's fault. Of all the provinces, they run the tightest ship, at an estimated €1.8 million a year, whereas the annual budgets for the other provinces are estimated to vary between €3.5 and €3.8.
It is also quite clear that a preferred option in trimming the IRFU's annual expenditure is to reduce the domestic professional playing pool from 120 to 90.
Nor does it require a rocket scientist, nor even a paranoid Connachtman, to deduce that in such a scenario the westerners' heads are on the block. So, when the various cost-cutting options were being outlined by the union's men at last Thursday's debriefing with Connacht officials, one of the latter demanded: "Stop patronising us." In light of that increasingly acrimonious meeting it's unlikely that the cost-cutting proposals, the scrapping of team Connacht among them, will be brought up at this Thursday's IRFU committee meeting given the Connacht Branch have successfully sought a meeting of all the province's CEOs and treasurers, along with their IRFU counterparts, early next week.
It is also believed that the Connacht branch will seek a full council meeting of the IRFU to debate such a monumental decision rather than have it passed through somewhat sneakily at one of the regular 22-man committee meetings, at which they have only three delegates - Don Crowley, Jeff Smith and Billy Glynn.
As current president of the IRFU, Crowley has been placed in a very invidious position amid a strong suspicion that this move has been timed deliberately to coincide with a Connacht presidency. Crowley spoke up for his province last Thursday, and enjoys the full confidence of the Connacht Branch.
Granted, there is an argument for disbanding Connacht's professional set-up, on the grounds that traditionally they have been the weakest province, whose results are the poorest and who produce the smallest number of internationals.
Yet, since accepting their curtailed budget two years ago, and with it their revised status as a developmental province, Connacht have met every criterion demanded of them.
The Connacht team which took the field against Munster last Friday had 12 home-reared players in it, the same as Munster and more than Ulster the next day. Union bigwigs bemoan Connacht's penchant for bringing in Southern Hemisphere players, yet Ulster have been far more guilty of this in recent years. With the likes of Johnny O'Connor, Damien Browne, Gavin Duffy, Jerry Flannery and others, the province has never had a better crop of young indigenous players while the case of Des Dillon is an example of how Connacht can be used to everyone's benefit.
NOR are they there to just prop up Galwegians and Buccaneers. A Galwegians team with just one contracted player went to Belfast Harlequins on Saturday and won, thus moving to the top of the AIL Division One. Buccs beat Lansdowne the week before with just one contracted player, while a resurgent Corinthians and the Connemara All Blacks are doing nicely in Division Three.
There is further evidence of the developmental boom in the province. The Connacht under-21s won an interprovincial grand slam for the first time since the early 1970s last year. The Connacht Youths won two out of three in the interprovincials this season, and provide 10 of the Irish Youths squad of 40.
In the late 1980s there were seven schools attached to the Connacht Branch, in the mid 1990s there were a dozen and last year there were 40. Cosmetic dressing? Hardly. The Connacht schools' team which lost 26-7 to a Leinster A side (picked from the stronger section) was drawn from 11 different schools.
Another complaint held in 62 Lansdowne Road about Connacht is their poor crowd-pulling ability. Yet crowds of almost 7,000 and 6,000 have this season attended their matches in Donnybrook and Musgrave Park - record attendances for the fixtures. It's also ironic - and a sign of bad planning - that the IRFU have just helped the Connacht Branch build new offices in the Sportsground, where there is also a joint commitment with Bord na gCon to build a new corporate stand. To watch Connacht go to the dogs? Of course, the Branch would presumably stay in existence, but with no team Connacht to aspire to, it's difficult to see how the game in the west can develop at all.
One caller on Des Cahill's Sportscall on Sunday evening was ringing from Ballinrobe, where he coaches a mini-rugby side, and simply asked what kind of message this would send out to him, his players and every other mini-rugby set-up in the province.
Trimming all the provincial budgets by about 15 per cent would achieve the same savings as jettisoning Connacht altogether, although there's obviously less scope for further cuts in the west. And that's without looking at the extravagance of the union's annual bill with the Berkeley Court, or the marketing opportunities of Ireland competing in the World Cup, which don't seem to have been explored.
Besides which, given the battles they've fought and the greater scope for development in the less fertile west, Connacht is arguably the province which the IRFU should be pumping the most resources into. If they jettison Connacht, the IRFU officers and committee will have failed one of the four proud provinces of Ireland. How long then before they fail Irish rugby? Or, indeed, have they already started?
gthornley@irish-times.ie
