This is due to be the last championship under the current system. While football experiments with losers' rounds and a parallel All-Ireland qualifier, hurling will spend one further year with the much-maligned "back door" format.

That it has produced championships with bigger attendances and competitive semi-finals is widely ignored, but, as a prototype for a saner championship structure, it served a useful purpose.

No amount of twiddling with structures will make a championship what it can't be: competitive on a wide scale. To what extent structures can influence levels of performance and achievement is open to debate, but anything that ameliorates the rigours of knockout is bound to increase the chances of the best team actually winning the All-Ireland.

Optimists amongst us assume that a programme of regular competitive championship matches over the summer would benefit everyone, but what if there just aren't enough teams good enough to compete? On Kilkenny's form last year, would an expanded championship have meant simply more one-sided matches?

Hand wringing over the state of hurling is a popular pastime. My predecessor here, Paddy Downey, reminded an audience on his retirement in 1994 that hurling was being diagnosed as near death's door for as long as he could remember, yet there it was still going strong. And that was before the wonder years of the late 1990s.

It's inevitable that a certain gloom should descend in the wake of a championship that Kilkenny turned into a procession, but the champions' excellence isn't the problem. The fact was that hardly any other major county could look back on the year with any great satisfaction. Galway registered most improvement but didn't seem so sure about that themselves.

Ulster has become very competitive, but not at the sort of level that might have been hoped, despite Derry's resourceful display against Offaly. As things stand, no Ulster county is going to come within an ass's roar of winning an All-Ireland; and with Connacht having become officially recognised as unviable, that's two provinces with serious difficulties.

Actually, there are three. For all the desperate dangling aloft of last September's all-Leinster final, the province is in a terrible state. That Offaly beat Cork was, of course, a great achievement for a team in decline, but the second half was also as wretched a 35 minutes hurling as any All-Ireland champions have managed in defence of their title.

Of the teams in with a chance of beating Kilkenny, are any in Leinster? Much will be made of Offaly's splendid record against the champions, but there hasn't been the remotest sign of the county being able to contest a championship match with Kilkenny for three years.

People will shake their heads in the run-up to the Leinster semi-final between the old rivals, and much will be heard of Offaly's unpredictability and capacity to pull a fast one - the equivalent of draping crucifixes around visitors' necks - but the conditions for such upsets no longer survive.

Offaly aren't what they were, whereas Kilkenny are better. Not that the champions are unbeatable; there's good reason to believe that they'll experience severe difficulty hitting the heights of last year. But in the province, who's going to explore that to the limit?

Even Offaly's minor Leinster title, which put a stop to a decade of Kilkenny success, requires further elaboration before it means anything more than a wake-up call for their rivals.

Munster again will save the season as a spectacle with mass appeal. Atmosphere and good crowds will be expected at each of the matches, with Clare and Tipperary once more about to sell out Pairc Ui Chaoimh. Both teams are flawed but have had time to work on those shortcomings - Tipperary's full backs and Clare's attack. Given the respective stages of the life-cycle reached by the teams, Tipp look in a better position to improve.

Cork's year has been low-key and uninspiring. A bit like two years ago, before Jimmy Barry-Murphy and Tom Cashman concocted an All-Ireland winning blend. Now manager Cashman has experimented during the league without leaving too many people any the wiser as to his likely championship plans - or prospects.

You would feel that if Waterford couldn't take Cork in the league, they'll hardly manage it in the championship, whereas if Cork have disimproved, Limerick don't look as if they're moving up to close the gap.

Galway have gone for a high-risk strategy, running themselves down in the league and concentrating on the end of July when they enter the championship. Like all big gambles, this one ensures an anxious wait. But they remain the one team whose negative symptoms everyone's unwilling to believe.

Maybe everyone's right.