The AIL ended yesterday with both the men’s and women’s finals taking place in Dublin in the Aviva Stadium. UL Bohs defeated Blackrock College in a tight finish scoring the winning try after the clock had gone over 80 minutes.
UL Bohs will be delighted that they found a way past a stubborn Blackrock side to gain victory on the AIL’s big day on centre stage in Ireland where there were no games in the URC or Women’s Six Nations to compete with for air time or coverage.
The men’s final saw St Mary’s College take on Clontarf in a fabulous advertisement for the club game and dare I say it, it matched if not bettered certain URC games of recent years. The standard is very high and yes it was two Dublin sides contesting the show piece this year as has been the case a few times in recent seasons with Cork Constitution one of the sides to break that strangle hold.
The AIL has struggled for breathing space since the early 2000s when it was the provincial set up that the IRFU went with to meet the fresh demands of professionalism. This of course has caused ongoing problems between both club and province. It is a dance that has been done for many years and will continue.
The new season will see certain AIL divisions regionalised to cut down on costs and allow teams to rebuild from within if they need to. As is the case in all of sport, money has dictated this as well due to certain costs associated with travel to and from games in certain places.
Yesterday’s game was the culmination of the 25/26 season and saw St Mary’s College crowned winners for the first time in 14 years. Head Coach Mark Mc Hugh was a Mary’s player himself and you could see what the win yesterday meant to him and his coaches.
Interestingly, Mary’s had ex Munster centre Dan Goggin in the Number 8 shirt with Conor Dean at 10 who had a good underage career with Ireland having been capped at Under 20 level for Ireland and played professionally with Connacht.
As the son of ex Irish out half Paul, he certainly showed the same safe hands and movement on occasion as his Dad did in green for Ireland over a successful 32 caps between 1981 and 1989 winning a Championship under Mick Doyle in 1985.
The AIL has done well to try and marry both the pro game and amateur with a large number of current and ex professionals still involved both as players and coaches as was in evidence yesterday with Cian Healy assisting Clontarf and guys like Hugh Cooney currently on the books at Leinster at 13 while you had Jordan Coughlan at 8 who spent time on the books of Munster and Leicester Tigers as well as an underage career with Leinster.
The game yesterday was a real advert for what attacking rugby can achieve. Mary’s went after Clontarf and were deservedly 15-12 up at half time going on to win 46-31.
In a refreshing change no TMO was in use and the rule in the AIL level for tackles below the chest was also in evidence, where you have to keep your tackles below chest height, anything above that will result in a penalty.
The match officials also had a great game and have to take huge credit in allowing the game to flow and also being up to the pace of the game as it was very fast moving over the 80 minutes. My own biggest take away is that the club game is in good health, I know plenty will say that is not the case everywhere and I am sure plenty is being done to help push other clubs on in all divisions of both senior and junior rugby.
Well done to all those sides at both senior and junior level who won this weekend and a word for UCC captain Sam O Sullivan who suffered a cardiac incident during Saturday’s play off vs Shannon. All the very best to him in his recovery.
Well done also to Tralee RFC who beat Killarney RFC in the Martin O Sullivan Cup Final played in Virgin Media Park yesterday afternoon, Tarbert man Sean Thompson was in the winning Tralee squad.