When the GAA held the perfunctory little ceremony to mark the draw for tomorrow's All-Ireland quarterfinals they got quite lucky. Offaly and Clare would have made for an interesting 70 (or 68) minutes, but Antrim and Galway would have been a flaccid affair, attractive to the populations of neither county.

As it happened the balls came out of the bag just right. Antrim play the only team of the three whom they believe they have a slender chance of beating. Clare play neighbours Galway and Clare's convincing impression of wounded behemoths has been enough to convince the many sceptics huddled in Galway that this quarter-final could be a gateway rather than another dead-end.

What has happened with the back-door system since its inception amidst clarion calls of disgust from traditionalists in 1997 has been unusual. Firstly, the worst-case scenarios cropped up early and, well, nobody died, in fact no deceased persons even rotated slightly in their graves. Tipperary, badly beaten in the 1997 Munster final, rose again to play Clare in the final.

They lost courtesy of a sublime last-minute save from Davy Fitzgerald. Then Offaly, the decade's most noted contrarians, surrendered Leinster, ditched their manager, brought in a guy who hadn't been near an inter-county side in a decade, and proceeded to win the All-Ireland the hard way.

First champions of the back door and all that anybody could talk about was how fine the hurling was. Except the Offaly county board of course. They still preferred the old system.

Generally, though, what debate there has been has assumed a ratchet quality. Last year the system was given an extended trial without bloodshed on the debating floor and this summer the discussion on the back-door system has given way to a rising clamour for more matches and (it is assumed) better matches. Sure, there have been silly conspiracy theory rumours arising out of missed close-in frees by Offaly and Clare late in their provincial finals to the effect that these were proof that experienced teams were easing off the pedal at just the right moment to: (a) avoid the inconvenience of a draw; (b) secure the right to drive the scenic route through the quarter-finals. Not true, and, if true, so what?

The success of the back-door system, as it has come to be known (the title has a somewhat unfair pejorative air about it), has brought the GAA to a crossroads. The sacred shibboleth of championship, to the effect that if you're beaten you're gone, has been banished. And nobody minds too much. Reasonable quarter-finals, good semi-finals and finals have led to a demand for more games. It's easy to let the imagination run riot devising calendars with all manner of convoluted competition, but Nicky Brennan, who ushered in the back-door system in the first place, advises caution.

"I think the present system will stay for a period at least to the end of its current four-year trial. It won't change before then. There will be some changes elsewhere. There are issues in Leinster which might facilitate some of the counties (i.e., the introduction of a round robin preliminary system). That's not a national thing, though. So the structure we have will stay until the four-year period is up. After that, who knows? "There appears to be a mood or an appetite right now for more championship games, not just in hurling. My big concern is that nobody anywhere is giving consideration to how the club will survive in all of this. One thing which is fairly clear is that the profile of the games now is phenomenal and there is no going back from that, but the knock-on effect is on club games held on a Sunday afternoon, they are being impacted by lack of attendances."

Brennan has little doubt that the media, television in particular, has an insatiable appetite for more live GAA product.

The fabled Munster hurling championship, for instance, produces just five hurling games in a year without replays. Yet the association must find some way of bridging the gap between becoming a remote television spectacular that runs all weekend, every weekend, from spring till autumn, and of being the integral part of community life that it has always been. Vacating territory at local level would sow long-term problems.

In the changed environment there might be a case for letting money trickle down to clubs from the increased sponsorship and television fees which the inter-county game is attracting, but doing that fairly and still recognising the other functions of the club would be tricky. Yet Brennan recognises the ineluctability of the swollen inter-county calendar. What TV and sponsors want they will get.

"I think we are moving towards some form of structure in hurling anyway that would see a gelling of league and championship while preserving the inter-provincial aspect. The league is suffering from an identity crisis now and the irony is that a lot of the people clamouring for more games in the championship and busting their guts for nine months training for championship have been running down the leagues. There's no consistency there."

Another rippling scare which spread through the hurling rock pool when the new system was first mooted was that provincial finals in Leinster and Munster would become empty rituals if the loser was to be allowed limp off to casualty and be patched up for another day's play. Len Gaynor managed Tipperary in the first year of the experimental rules. They lost a Munster final to Clare, but recovered to reach the All-Ireland final. Gaynor started out as a sceptic, but the road changed him.

"I suppose I thought originally that a team which would lose a provincial final wouldn't come back and win an All-Ireland. Morale dips a good bit, but it depends on the draw you have. You win a game and you are back in business. Everyone who loses blames it on one thing or another and you get a chance to prove that, to go out and put things right. You can show you are capable of winning again. Weaker teams should be kept in maybe early in the championship, but not at that end. Stronger teams should be kept in at the end of the championship."

Ger Loughnane noted when Clare lost to Tipp this year that losing had a slightly different quality when you could start planning for a quarter-final immediately. Gaynor recognises the truth in Loughnane's words about the recovery rate of the bruised spirit.

"You have another chance. When the final whistle blows in a Munster final you are devastated, but after a day or two, maybe less, you start to think again. You don't think about that process before the provincial final, though. We certainly didn't think of it that way. I have no doubt about that. Everyone wants to win and the rivalries are keen enough that they want to win, but if you do lose you have the chance to get back. I don't think it has changed the quality of provincial finals at all."

The other argument which caught the imagination of naysayers on the debating floor was the perceived slap in the face which the new system gave to Ulster hurling. For the proud Ulster champions to be sent south to face the beaten finalists in another province was an upset in protocol which would demoralise northerners still further.

Sean McGuinness managed Antrim out of Ulster last year and into a disappointing quarter-final encounter with Offaly. Originally very much against the new system, he points out that if anything has been devalued it is the Ulster final. By its own hand.

"I spoke out against the backdoor system and I thought it would downgrade the Ulster final. I think this year the final was downgraded, but not by the system but by the decision to play it on a Saturday afternoon. We had a very poor crowd, the worst crowd since the early '90s. A lot of people are working on a Saturday afternoon, definitely it knocked people off. If the father is working in the family it means there's no family there if you come from north Antrim. We downgraded our own final."

McGuinness goes on to point out the uneven nature of the Ulster championship. London, who held his own side to a draw in 1997, turned up this summer looking only half as fit. When they did turn up that is. Antrim were on the pitch waiting while word went around the stands that London hadn't arrived at the airport yet.

"I still have reservations about the new system, but I don't know what the right way is. It's a bit like Munster football now: Cork and Kerry will win through always, and Clare might get out once in a blue moon. That's how it will be for us until we change."

Undoubtedly the system has been of more benefit to the stronger, traditional counties than it has been to smaller counties. Of the 10 games played by beaten Munster or Leinster finalists in All-Ireland series, they have a 70 per cent success rate. Teams from Connacht or Ulster have yet to win a match. Acceptance is dawning, however, that while the problems in Ulster especially may be highlighted by the system, but they certainly aren't caused by it.

McGuinness remembers talking to Paudie Butler, who ran the Tipp minor hurlers a few years ago. Butler was talking about what preparation the Tipp minors had been doing since the previous September. McGuinness couldn't help reflecting that in Antrim the underage selectors aren't even appointed until after Christmas in any given year.

"The days of crying poor relation are over," says McGuinness, "it's time to get the finger out and work harder. Over the past three years we set up an under-12 scheme throughout Ulster under the auspices of the Ulster council. Myself, Jim Nelson and Sean Sands set out a three-year scheme and in May we had 88 teams playing in the Feile. The standard in the top two divisions was excellent. We're trying to develop that into an under-15 league and we have another cycle of the under-12 thing starting."

The model for Ulster will have to be Dunloy, who took their own hurling structures by the scruff of the neck in the late '70s and early '80s and built from the bottom up. Today they are so far ahead of the rest of Antrim that it possibly isn't healthy. That's a problem for the other clubs, though.

"Until we have four teams in Ulster who could win the title we have a problem," says McGuiness. "Right now somebody is always going backwards, somebody is coming on and somebody is right there and in reality it's Antrim, Antrim and Antrim who'll win through.

"In Antrim itself the problem is that Dunloy are streets ahead of everyone and there's no competition. They have got it together. They never won a senior hurling championship until 1990." That season Dunloy asked McGuinness to travel up and take a couple of sessions and give a couple of talks. He enjoyed the experience, but concedes that at that stage they only needed a little sorting out. What struck him was the room for frankness, the usefulness of outside voices. In his own club he found he couldn't tell the truth. Too many friends and easily-bruised feelings. If you are an outsider you can tell the truth, get in your car and go home.

"We need people telling us the truth. Dunloy did a power of work from underage up and they listened a bit. Now they are bringing through new players. There's no sign of them going backwards. We need to realise that there's no point in crying the poor relation bit and hoping everyone will wait for us."

The issue of how things have changed and how things must change is a live one. Part of the movement for more games in the summer is media-provoked, another part comes from those players and managers who cite the number of training sessions they complete "just for one game".

The current craze for submitting hurlers to commando courses, giving them training more suitable for US marines than inter-county players, has brought on a little of the demand for the structures to be looked at again. Success, though, will never be spread out equitably as a function of the effort teams put in. "The manager these days sees what the successful teams are doing and it is most easily measured by the amount of physical training they are doing," says Brennan. "I think that is wrong. Today's teams are fitter, but I look at them training and there is so much more fitness work being done. I would say that more and more counties need time with the ball. Managers are coming in with carte blanche and they are opting for the 150 training sessions. Emphasising 70:30 say in favour of the physical. You can be as fit as you like, but if you can't do the basics . . . Some of the regimes are crazy."

Brennan points to the quiet success of hurling's junior and intermediate championships as a way of bringing on weak counties.

In the last 50 years eight counties have divided up the senior hurling All-Irelands between them. In the same period, 20 counties have won junior All-Irelands. Hurling has a more authentic junior and intermediate system than football and an acceptance of its integral good sense could be another way forward. "At least in hurling we have different levels and teams can aim at that. Maybe we should be looking at formalising that. No county wants to say that it can't play in the senior championship, the main event, but I don't care what level of training or finance they have some counties are not going to win it and they might as well bite the bullet, face reality and stop the wishful thinking. It won't happen. That might sound nasty, but they have to face the real world. One way or another."

Gaynor strikes a similar note when considering the plight of Connacht and Ulster at present.

"I don't see that it has been a step forward for them under the new system, but I can't see how it does any more damage than was being done in the old days. That wasn't getting people very far. I don't think they've fallen behind, they haven't gained anything by it. This so-called provincial final which Galway play against Roscommon doesn't help, but in Ulster it's hotting up. Derry are an upcoming team. They have a better chance if they are meeting a beaten team in the quarter-finals, it gives them a reasonable chance."

Tomorrow the boys from Antrim will come south again, reminding themselves of '89, reminding themselves of Ally Elliott's last-minute goal that saw of Offaly at Lougheil during the league. Chances are, though, they'll be beaten and so will Galway.

The system has done what it was intended to do, but it hasn't benefited those teams who play on the fringe of the big time. That will be the next step. And it will be a tougher one to take too.