Next year will see defeated teams from the earlier rounds of the hurling championship get a second crack. Based on the football blueprint that proved so successful this year, it would have - if in operation this year - opened up an alternative route for such teams as Cork, Clare, Waterford and Offaly.

Yet there is another sense in which things aren't actually going to change that much. Ger Loughnane said on the weekend's Sunday Game that the hurling season just concluded had been overshadowed by the football. There's not much arguing that but it's questionable whether the football prescription will work for hurling. It's been pointed out that hurling lacks the competitive depth to generate a Sligo or Westmeath, counties imprisoned by the provincial strait-jacket who nonetheless had the potential to take a notable scalp or two.

You could just about muster eight counties for a competitive batch of quarter-finals, as in last month's football equivalent, but there wouldn't be much variation from year to year. It's hard to know how hurling can improve this situation. The huge public interest in the game needs to be harnessed more effectively with more regular matches between the top teams, but spreading the reach of hurling is a massive task.

When changes to the All-Ireland championships are made, there are frequent mantras heard about the weaker counties and how they can be helped. In hurling, the simple answer is that anything that benefits elite counties has no relevance for weaker counties. When the hurling championship was changed in April 1996 at the London congress, the attention paid to the weaker counties was embodied in the revamped junior and intermediate championships.

Unfortunately counties are notoriously unwilling to embrace the challenge of competition pitched realistically at their level. Undiluted senior status is much prized even if it comes hand-in-hand with serial thrashings. Even when it's not a matter of senior status counties aren't sufficiently exercised by the prospect of winning graded All-Irelands.

It's not as if you're even talking about the demise of hurling. The game has never existed in any meaningful way in most counties north of the Galway-Dublin line and it's hardly likely to in the future.

Counties where football is strong aren't going to be bothered directing discretionary resources towards hurling - any more than vice versa. Hurling has a more rigid caste than football and nothing is going to change its essential hierarchies. The die is cast and if between eight and 12 counties can be kept even vaguely competitive at senior championship level, that's as good as it will get for the foreseeable future.

The world will continue to turn much as it has throughout the GAA's history. Cork, Kilkenny and Tipperary have between them won more than twice as many All-Irelands (70 per cent) as the rest of the country put together.

Tipperary's win at a time of structural change neatly bookends the first and most recent All-Irelands. One hundred and thirteen years ago, they defeated Galway and repeated the dose on Sunday.

If the tone of some of the foregoing is downbeat, it shouldn't be taken as a commentary on Tipperary's victory. There has been a good deal to admire in the way the team has been painstakingly put together and steered towards the All-Ireland. A friend from Tipp made the point that it was ironic that Nicky English, such a celebrated individual in his playing career, should have wrought such a collective improvement.

A county that in recent years has been characterised as having plenty of skilled players but a lack of unitary strength or will-power won an All-Ireland by playing as a team despite the struggle of some individuals to find their best form. There has also been a genuine quality to the team this year. Although recent precedent wasn't encouraging they won the National League title, eschewing the usual practice of hiding their hand in the spring.

The new structures are likely to enhance the chances of this being repeated. Maybe not next year but in the seasons to come. This is because with the abandonment of knockout, there has to come a more measured approach to the championship matches. Getting teams razzed up for sudden-death encounters must give way to the ability to reproduce good hurling a few times a summer.

Tipperary's training methods reflected something of this although the intensity of the Munster semi-final against Clare was very much from the conventional manual and the remainder of the campaign wasn't exactly easy-going.

Finally, sympathies to Galway whose apprehension about lack of match practice was borne out. They will be a clear beneficiary when the system is modified next year.

e-mail: smoran@irish-times.ie