The landscape of the AIB AIL League and the demographics of the game have changed completely in the competition's 15-year history. As with any league, not everyone can play in the first division. There have to be those on the up and those headed downwards. The upwardly mobile have tended to be those who have redefined themselves, be it through mergers or otherwise. Those who have tended to rely on traditional formulas have struggled.
For UL Bohemians, one can read Belfast Harlequins, Clontarf, Buccaneers, Co Carlow, Barnhall, Connemara and others; for Wanderers read Young Munster, Ards, Instonians, Old Wesley and more. The first division, especially, is now a young man's league and those who marry education and rugby are profiting. Predictions of the colleges' demise have proved premature; had UCC gained promotion there would be four university clubs in the top flight.
Wanderers and their ilk can't realistically emulate UL Bohemians, but maybe there are some lessons in there for them.
As a lesser-known, lower-profile Limerick club behind the likes of Shannon, Garryowen and Young Munster, Bohemians had it harder than most. In the 1999-2000 season they were a Division Three club that could barely scratch together a second team and didn't seem to have much of a future.
Whereupon, the University of Limerick came up with the idea of a merger with the university's rugby club that would entail a rugby academy. Martin O'Sullivan, a disillusioned former player who had just returned to the club, has no qualms in admitting it was the club's lifeblood.
"It was prompted by Dave Conroy, a regional development officer with Munster, and the university's Dave Maheedy," he recalls. And though, inevitably, there were a few traditionalists who objected, the vote at an egm was 102-7 in favour.
"The big thing was it gave us access to numbers," says O'Sullivan. "It allowed us to go out and bring guys in, which regenerated the whole structure of the club."
The university also gave the club access to the tracks, a synthetic pitch and gym, in addition to the five pitches and two or three mini-pitches out in Annacotty.
"The club had purchased Annacotty in the late '70s and people said, 'Why are you going out there?' But now, of course, Limerick has come out to us and we have a huge catchment area," adds O'Sullivan.
"Myself and others in the club came from banking, which is all about planning, and the strategic-planning sessions and brainstorming were good for us."
Evidence of this is their excellent PR/media work, three-monthly colour newsletters, and a website they like to think is among the best in the country. There have been innovative deals with Canterbury, whereby members receive vouchers for the club shop as part of their annual subscription in replica gear and the like.
Also very much a part of the club's vibrancy is the thriving women's team - they've been All-Ireland champions five years in a row and boast the Munster captain Patrique Kelly, the Ireland captain Sarah Jane Belton and the Ireland vice-captain Fiona Loughlin.
Mike Tewkesbury, a one-time winger with London Irish, coached Bohemians briefly 13 years ago before stints with Reading and Bracknell. He returned when the merger was agreed in 1999 and is now the club's director of rugby.
"It's run along similar lines to the union's regional academies," says Tewkesbury. "We've found it very beneficial, as an attraction to young players who perhaps don't come through conventional school backgrounds. Of our line-up against Cork Con (today's opening opponents) we'll have nine fellas who have come through the academy or are in it at the moment."
Most are students at the University of Limerick, although they can be from Limerick IT, and combine the academy's three sessions of weights, skills and speedwork with three- or four-year degrees. The students also study sports psychology, coach in the club's underage structure, and train with the senior or under-20 teams.
Initially, the club sought to target traditional rugby schools, but with Trinity, UCD and UCC hoovering up most of that talent, they've broadened their scope.
Standing as shining lights of the club's work are the contracted Barry Murphy, Keith Matthews and Ronan Loughney, the latter two with Connacht and Murphy with Munster. They have followed on from Martin McPhail.
The ensuing crop features the likes of Ian Hanley, from Kilfeacle; Tom O'Donnell, the Irish Youths number eight from Clanwilliam; and Michael Skelton, a promising outhalf from Naas who played for the Irish Youths.
"As a rule we put no figure on the numbers we bring in each year. This year we have only brought in O'Donnell and Skelton, but we're now looking at another four under-20s who have come on late. We've been fortunate in some of the players who've pitched up, and that the president of the university, Dr Roger Downer, is a rugby enthusiast. Our model is sort of an Australian or New Zealand university club, where it's an open club. A good 50 per cent of the players could be ordinary club members, which does give us an advantage."
The club's academy receives no financial help from either the university or the IRFU but thrives thanks to a very proactive committee and huge volunteer work.
Despite lasting no more than a season on their previous stint in Division One, two years ago, UL Bohs have stuck to their guns in relying on largely home-grown products. With the addition of one or two new faces, such as the former Munster prop Mike Storey, Ben Martin (a one-time ACT Brumbies outhalf-cum-goalkicker who has returned to the game after some globetrotting) and an Australian mate of his, Chris Delooze, who has played scrumhalf for the Australian Students, they believe they're better equipped this time around.
"Other than that it's the players we've developed through our own academy and guys who have been club members," says Tewkesbury.
Their prized provincial products don't look like they'll be around as much, but the others are a couple of years older and wiser.
They admit they have to keep thinking, and probably need to further improve their marketing and recruitment drive. Now, perhaps, comes the hard part.
"My ultimate dream," says Tewkesbury, "is that if an elite group of clubs emerges at the top we will be one of those clubs. We would want to reach that level, and given how well we're organised off the field, that is possible. If you get it right off the field, it's much easier to get it right on the field."
And, as much an anything else, they're putting down roots for the future.
Just as the AIL has become the butt of tired old put-downs, Wanderers are an easy target. It wasn't their fault that many of us in the media made them one of the favourites for the inaugural, nine-team First Division back in 1990-1991. They were the reigning Leinster League champions and had a relatively star-studded team led by Philip Matthews, one of 13 representative players in their squad.
Anyone who was there can still remember the seismic scenes in Lansdowne Road on opening day, October 6th, 1990, when Garryowen rode into town and invaded the sleepy old headquarters. Nothing about the history of the club game had truly prepared us or Wanderers for what happened.
A Garryowen team without stars were roared home to a 15-7 win and it's as if Wanderers were in a state of shock ever since.
In truth they were unlucky in that inaugural year, and despite winning away to Malone and Shannon, defeats by 7-4 at home to Instonians and 10-9 away to eventual champions Cork Constitution (who would beat Garryowen in a final day shoot-out) relegated them, even though they had a penalty to beat Con which would have kept them up.
Even so, if you had forecast then that Wanderers would return after two seasons in the seconddivision, only to be relegated immediately, spend eight years in Division Two once more and then the last three in Division Three, and kick off the 2005-2006 season away to Clonakilty, few would have believed you.
As much as anything, they've been the victim of circumstances ever since.
"Mr Denis Templeton (referee) for one," quips Michael McLoughlin, one of the club's stalwarts, half-jokingly. "Well, Kenny Smith had five kicks at goal that day and landed them all, while we had a perfectly legitimate try disallowed. But that's by the by."
Wanderers' demise has no doubt been the source of much amusement the length and breadth of the club game over the years. The club that used to wield so much power and influence in 62 Lansdowne Road, the club of Ronnie Dawson, the Flynns, the Cullitons and others, couldn't arrest their slide.
"We brought in Jake Howard in the '90s, who was a fantastic coach," says McLoughlin, somewhat defensively, before adding, "Recruitment got more difficult. The spread of youth talent in the community dried up also and that militated against us. The demographics changed, and where once we drew players from everywhere, increasingly they began to go to the universities and not move on to us or other clubs."
Wanderers had never had a feeder school per se. The under-19 teams that won the McCorry Cup in 1978 and back-to-back cups in the 1979-1980 and 1980-1981 seasons were, McLoughlin reckons, drawn from about 11 or 12 schools. This pool was topped up with captures from everywhere, be it Jerry Holland when his job moved him from Cork to Dublin, Robbie McGrath or Frank Ennis from Clontarf. Wanderers' name and connections made them an attractive proposition for ambitious young players.
They had a good Trinity connection, which became a UCD connection, but when the results worsened, and the well started to dry up with a spate of retirements and injuries in the mid-1990s, McLoughlin admits, mistakes were made. "We threw a lot of money at it, and then about five years ago decided that we weren't going to pay the players anywhere, so about eight, nine or 10 players left. So there was a money factor, and it didn't work. We were paying too much money for hired hands."
The club has made a modest turnaround, and with it a modest profit last season.
"We're not in the red anymore," says McLoughlin, and this season's team, again coached by Connacht's former New Zealand lock Martin McConnell, has been shaping up well in the Leinster League and Cup, making them one of the favourites for promotion.
But beyond that, they don't seem to be sure where they're going. For starters, there's the ongoing question of what sort of arrangement they and fellow tenants Lansdowne will make with the IRFU over the redevelopment of Lansdowne Road.
"We are based in a metropolitan area with six other clubs in a two- or three-mile radius. There aren't enough schools to feed us all and if the universities are cherrypicking of course it makes it difficult. Because nowadays, they don't come back. We're going to have to work harder for our area, but realistically clubs in Dublin 4 are going to have to look at the option of mergers."
That, or something even more left-field.
"I would have liked Wanderers to have gone out to Newlands and be the club off the M50. There are 23 primary schools and 13 secondary schools playing in the Tallaght region. Great work is being done out there and the Leinster youths are feeling the benefits. Plus there's a huge catchment area out there and a business community. It's too far for people to come in from work to Merrion Road."
McLoughlin made that proposal to the club, but they wouldn't go for it. If they stay put, then Wanderers are going to have to invest in the longer term rather than the short term, by expanding on their new €40,000 gym with more improved facilities, and further develop their well-regarded underage and under-20 structure while reaching out more to their local community to make the club a more attractive proposition.
For the moment, it would seem, promotion may or may not be achieved, and probably isn't the most important thing on their agenda.
They're lacking a little identity and while they may have a great past, they're struggling for a future.
