AIL’s struggle for air time goes on
Mark Melbourne in action for Garryowen last weekend in the AIL - the league's struggle for media attention goes on
In his weekly AIL column, rugby correspondent Colm Kinsella at the league’s annual struggle for media attention
THE Ulster Bank All-Ireland League traditionally struggles to gain much media profile at this time of the season especially with the RBS Six Nations Championship grabbing all the headlines.
Clubs will have been encouraged then to see the league being featured on RTE’s rugby programme, Against the Head’ on Monday night last.
Two games were featured, the Division 1A meeting of Young Munster and Cork Constitution at Tom Clifford Park and Shannon’s away fixture against Lansdowne.
What a pity though that the highlights of both games were extremely brief. With such a large TV audience watching, Against the Head provides a perfect platform for the club game to gain some much-needed publicity.
Having the league featured on national TV is a welcome development and hopefully the AIL will continue to be covered on the very enjoyable Against the Head programme on Monday nights on a regular basis through the remainder of the season.
However, let’s hope the amount of time devoted to these highlights increases, so as to give TV viewers a more complete picture of the excellent standard of play in the competition.
Over the past number of year, RTE broadcast one of the AIL semi-finals live before showing the decider live also. These were important profile builders for the AIL, occasions when a sizeable chunk of the audience who were, no doubt, unaware of the merits of the league got an opportunity to view entire games at close quarters.
This season, with the abolition of the play-offs, there won’t be any semi-finals or final with which to showcase the club game in this country.
Hopefully the national broadcaster and the powers that be in the club game will allow for a fixture or two in the final few rounds of the Division 1A regular season to be broadcast live on TV.
The fear initially was that the abolition of the top four play-offs might hinder the competitive nature of the top flight should one team run away with things.
However, such fears have not be realised to date, at least. Just four points separate the top three sides in the Division with seven series of games to go. A thrilling finish looks to be on the cards. Let’s just hope RTE decide to show it to that wider audience.
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