Munster hurling final time. The sign that the year has become serious. Increasingly in recent years it is also the culmination of the most competitive part of the entire hurling championships.

This year has been no different and to make things better, has featured a surprise contender in the shape of Limerick's hurlers who have brought an exciting novelty to the early stages that would have been entirely lacking otherwise.

So far this season there has been a predictability to the hurling. Of the serious matches played (with respect to the Kildare hurlers), the favourites have won every one with the exception of Limerick's memorable win over Cork in Pairc Ui Chaoimh. All the Munster matches were however competitive and hopefully this will be still true next week.

But it remains that the hurling public is being terribly short-changed by the current structures.

"What's happening in football is great," according to one inter- county manager, "but now that it's been agreed why does hurling have to wait another year. We're losing out to football all the time because of this." His argument is valid. Whereas it could be said that the boot was on the other foot for four years while beaten Leinster and Munster finalists were allowed progress to the All- Ireland series, that would ignore that the "back door" only brought hurling up to speed with football which has always had separate and competitive All-Ireland semi-finals simply because of the game's wider base.

This weekend, on the day before the Munster final, the All-Ireland football qualifiers will feature two matches in particular that define the appeal of the format. Donegal travel to Kildare for a match between two serious counties whereas in a more romantic event, last year's All-Ireland finalists Galway travel to Aughrim.

A guarantee of two matches only improves things so much in football but in hurling, it is even less adequate given that the game is so different in summer than it is at less clement times of the year.

There is a growing sense of realisation that the championships in both football and hurling will have to be played on a league basis.The reasons are straightforward. A more comprehensive programme has the approval of two vital interest groups, players and spectators - the groups who polled most heavily in favour of last year's Football Development Committee proposals, which envisaged a round-robin format.

Again whereas this may be desirable in football, it is vital in hurling. The football qualifiers have generated a number of plausible and mostly competitive matches but hurling doesn't have that sort of resource. A group of eight teams would adequately encompass all hurling counties with plausible championship ambitions. It would replace the all-or-nothing heat of current encounters because one defeat wouldn't be fatal but with all teams competitive, the matches would still be important.

Do crowds come for the all-or-nothing heat? Up to a point. The fear of elimination makes the old-fashioned championships a cathartic experience for supporters and teams alike but that is not a good enough reason to run the premier competitions on such a senselessly wasteful basis. Everyone would be better off with a steady supply of decent matches rather than a tapering series of sudden-death contests. There would obviously be a play-off element and an All-Ireland final but by then, the awful prospect of a one-match season would have faded.

There is reason to suspect that the viciousness sometimes to be seen in championship matches is the product of the environment that insists on pumping up testosterone levels virtually from the time the championship draws are made the previous autumn. Regular competitive matches place more of a premium on discipline if only because they provide a context for proper suspensions but also because they introduce the sense of an ongoing project rather than an immediate obstacle beyond which they won't, or certainly aren't encouraged to, look.

The evidence is there. Four years ago, the eight-team Division One was a great success in the National League. Matches between Wexford and Kilkenny, Clare and Tipperary, Clare and Limerick were all a great success - on Sa turday evenings as well as Sunday afternoons.

Had this summer's championship featured additional fixtures between Cork and Tipperary or Limerick and Clare, wouldn't large crowds have turned out? And that's just Munster. Clubs argue that this would result in an overl oaded calendar in which they would suffer and if the primary unit of the games suffers, the future is endangered. This is becoming a frayed argument. Firstly it is now evident that if the GAA doesn't maximise the potentia l of it's games, it wil lose - is losing - out to other sports. Secondly the administration of club programmes is dismal.

The GAA's club fixtures work group report of 18 months found that half the counties provide only 12 matches or fewer per year and 27 per cent of GAA players get to play fewer than 10 matches per year.

So the lament from the clubs that they can't spare the time to allow a meaningful programme of inter-county activity is suspect at best. The problem essentially is that the GAA is not built or administered to implement radical change - however necessary it may be.

How much longer will it be before the dictates of logic are fully observed? The delicate manoeuvres necessary to pilot through change simply take too long. This was all very well when competing sports moved at about the s ame rate. But rugby and soccer are international sports with a high profile. Rugby no longer conducts itself as an arcane activity best enjoyed as exclusively as possible. It's now a professional sport looking for recruits.

Change to counter these threats has come too slowly and it must be with a sense of mounting helplessness that Croke Park officials view the challenges ahead.