Numbers just don't add up in intercounty hurling

On Gaelic Games: Saturday's special congress at Croke Park was interesting despite the predictability of much of the proceedings. The main departure - apart from the refreshingly light feeling of it being over by lunchtime - was that for once delegates appeared to want more radical change than was on offer from the reporting task forces.

It is as well to stress "appeared" because in fact it has yet to be determined what nature and scale of change will be deemed desirable at next April's annual congress.

GAA president Nickey Brennan was buoyant after the day's business. "I think there is a mood for more radical changes," he said. "I'm pleased and they'll certainly get the chance to have their say in the next couple of months."

The revolutionary fervour had been cooled a bit at the afternoon meeting to debate proposed league changes at Central Council where in an Augustinian frame of mind delegates decided they should be granted reform - but not yet.

In fact it emerged far from progressing the National Hurling League structure, the meeting had entertained siren voices in favour of playing matches before Christmas - a move completely at odds with the successful calendar-year format and opposed by virtually everyone involved with intercounty teams.

The most radical aspect of the congress debates was the explicit support for the implementation of the football proposals next year rather than the year afterwards, as recommended by Páraic Duffy's task force. This consensus was driven more by the desire to thin out the summer intercounty dates than a rising enthusiasm for the changes.

In that context it's fair to question the commitment of those counties, which will find themselves by the end of next spring deprived of a place in the All-Ireland qualifiers.

The nub of Saturday's football discussions was that so far there are no clearly labelled losers in the brave new world. But as soon as they began to be identified under the terms of the hurling proposals there was no shortage of opposition to suggested reforms.

There were other reasons the football moved along so smoothly as opposed to the hurling. For a start Duffy is the GAA's foremost trouble-shooter. In the past six years he has been a major success as chair of the old Games Administration Committee, navigator through another special congress of the qualifier system, initiator - with Frank Murphy - of a raft of improved disciplinary measures as well as the successful proponent of Saturday's football proposals.

But his counterpart, Ned Quinn, of the Hurling Development Committee, had broader problems and they weren't simply a failure of advocacy. The hurling blueprint managed to encompass changes that were too threatening to some counties and not threatening enough for others.

Yet that's the nature of intercounty hurling: the numbers don't add up. Dublin's Michael O'Grady presented the reality more clearly and bluntly than any of the other speakers. His analysis was unarguable - the provincial system is dysfunctional. Had his suggested solution of league-based championship found approval, the congress could certainly have been deemed as radical as the first Dáil but there would be no hope of such an idea being embraced.

O'Grady touched on the one practical weakness at the heart of the hurling proposals - the long-term impossibility of running a 12-county championship for the MacCarthy Cup at the same time as a nine-county Division One. O'Grady's simile that it would be like "going from second gear to fifth gear or overdrive" is well founded.

Having won Division Two this year, Dublin were still sufficiently off championship pace to lose to another Division Two outfit, Westmeath, who went on the win plaudits for a spirited if brief sojourn in the MacCarthy Cup that saw them lose four matches by a cumulative 58 points before returning to the Ring Cup after defeat by Dublin the second time around in a relegation play-off. The year before even a relatively established county like Offaly, after bouncing straight back out of an embarrassing season in Division Two, were gunned down by 31 points against Kilkenny. Next year it's Laois's turn to stall and cut out.

Both Offaly and Dublin improved as the summer unfolded, progress that was at the heart of the qualifier concept. That idea of affording weaker counties the opportunity to hurl competitively during the summer looks to have been forgotten in the otherwise valid criticisms of the current group-based qualifiers.

Sadly there isn't compelling evidence the exposure is working. None of the eight All-Ireland quarter-finalists - the same counties for the past two years - have lost a qualifier match to anyone outside the elite. Even this year after Limerick's thrashing in Ennis they recovered in time to beat Offaly by 10 points. In other words there's as much an argument to cut the championship down to the size of any proposed Division One as to expand the league in the other direction.

Ironically the one elite competition crying out for reform is the National Hurling League but it will see no change until 2008. The rationale was obvious and in a way fair: to give Dublin, Antrim and Down the chance of making the cut for the new nine-team Division One.

(Even the choice of nine rather than eight counties for the top flight smacks too much of cartel decision-making - why not eight and instil some fear in hurling's elite?) But as a result the game will be subjected to another league schedule containing too many dead fixtures and guaranteed to minimise public interest.

In a few months it will be all of 10 years since the GAA last ran a proper first division restricted to eight teams. There was big spectator interest and large crowds. Running the knockout stages during the summer didn't work but that would be remedied by giving the title to the county that finished top of the table.

Hurling was vibrant with competition back then and could have benefited enormously from the sort of championship structures now in place. But those days aren't coming back anytime soon and the GAA must deal with the times as they are.

Just don't hold your breath for anything too radical.