Offaly's fear for their status is well founded

On Gaelic Games:These were supposed to be a few weeks of a lull in the hurling season but Saturday's Central Council meeting was significant in terms of how the game will progress from next year. Although it's impossible not to feel sympathy for John McIntyre and the plight of Offaly hurlers there is more to this debate than the fate of one county.

After an encouraging season in the National Hurling League during which they beat eventual winners Waterford, Offaly ended up in a relegation play-off because of scoring difference and, depleted by injury, got trimmed by Limerick and consigned to Division Two. Given the margins involved - apart from the play-off - this appears a disproportionate consequence.

McIntyre has outlined his fears about the consequences for Offaly, the championship disadvantage of playing outside of the elite level during the spring and having to rise to senior championship a few weeks later. All this he knows from two years ago when, having taken over the side in Division Two, McIntyre secured promotion but the effect of competing at a lower tempo was drastically exposed by a 31-point drubbing by Kilkenny in the championship.

This time the sentence is worse because the new structure requires a play-off between the Division Two winners and a team from Division One. As McIntyre told Ian O'Riordan in this newspaper last week: "The reality is Offaly will be exiled in Division Two for years. Promotion will be based on playing the bottom-placed team from Division One, who'll have had eight high-quality games behind them, whereas Offaly won't have had one." This scenario referred to shows the GAA have accepted a process of ghetto-isation within the game. It can be argued this was done for the best of reasons - to prevent the top division from becoming uncompetitive by admitting counties who are not up to the standard required. It hasn't turned out for the best. This attempt to insulate the top counties has a good chance of condemning those outside the elite to permanently secondary status.

There are two major concerns that need to be addressed. Taking the bigger picture first, there is no future in maintaining the disparity between the size of Division One and that of the field for the MacCarthy Cup as long as the league is run on current lines. Dublin special congress delegate Michael O'Grady pointed this out last autumn, ridiculing the concept of teams "good enough to play in the MacCarthy Cup but not in Division One of the league". This can't be done on the current basis. If meaningful participation in the senior All-Ireland championship is to be so dependent on membership of Division One there will have to be a mechanism for automatic promotion and relegation. Otherwise there will be no room for competition and development.

There is also a significant point to be made about the detail of the new league structure. The original idea to institute a nine-team Division One was a transparent cop-out. Ten years ago the best National Hurling League season in recent memory was based on the new calendar-year season, fine weather, a late running season and crucially an eight-county division. That structure also included a radical three-up and three-down promotion and relegation system to maintain competition. In 1997 the two divisions were: One - Clare, Tipperary, Limerick, Kilkenny, Wexford, Offaly, Laois and Galway; Two - Cork, Dublin, Waterford, Antrim, Westmeath, Meath, London and Kerry. At the end of the season, Dublin, Cork and Waterford were promoted and Laois, Wexford and Clare relegated.

Yet after a great league, the whole thing was scrapped and the following year the Hurling League switched to a 12-team Division One. Last autumn's decision to create a nine-county Division One was based on the desirability of pulling up the drawbridge with all the main counties - the eight All-Ireland quarter-finalists plus Offaly - in the castle. That it came up for such impassioned review was partly because of Offaly's tenacity but more because Dublin disrupted the cartel this season by taking points off Kilkenny, Galway and Limerick.

Looking back at the debate on hurling structures last October it's worth remembering the most animated contributions came not from Offaly but Antrim, Down and Dublin - the three counties perceived as most likely to go through the trapdoor and had that gone to plan Central Council wouldn't even have been discussing a 10-team Division One at the weekend. It was only through the intervention of Dublin and Antrim that counties even got a chance to earn their place in the new Division One when Central Council was persuaded to suspend the new format until 2008.

Offaly's fears for their new status are not unique. The same arguments about developing young players in the most advanced environment apply equally to Laois and Antrim. Realistically how could Offaly have been granted a derogation and one refused to Laois, Antrim and even Down? One of the principal grounds for the above fears is the precipitous drop in standards between Division One and Two. And the nine-team format exacerbates the situation. Had the eight-team alternative been implemented, next season's Division Two wouldn't be so bare looking, containing as it would Limerick, Offaly, Laois and Antrim.

The system for next year is asset stripping Division Two, rendering its promotion candidates less capable of competing with Division One teams. What's scheduled is an attempt to ring-fence leading counties without offering adequate incentive to those who aspire to joining that elite or creating sufficient apprehension among those wishing to maintain top-tier status - which from a developmental perspective doesn't make a lot of sense.