How did it come to this? Four years ago, the first calendar-year hurling season was inaugurated. The League started in March and throughout the spring, crowds flocked to the fixtures. On one afternoon Clare and Limerick drew 18,000 to their regulation match in the Gaelic Grounds. Tomorrow, this year's NHL gets underway with a sense of baffled irritation and resignation uppermost in the minds of the hurling counties. The idea of shifting the season was to ensure conditions better suited to hurling and it worked well.

Now teams are being asked to start in early February on gluepot surfaces and play three successive rounds of the League before the end of the month. Not alone is the weather bad, but players will be unavailable because of the All-Ireland club semi-finals and the Fitzgibbon Cup.

The reason behind this re-arrangement is that the football championship reforms and their extra matches have forced the hurling season forward. Should hurling, as expected, get its own additional championship fixtures next year, the NHL will move back to before Christmas, thus reversing the progress of recent years.

All of this coincides with a dramatic fall in the League's status. Three years ago, 40,000 came to Thurles for the Cork-Waterford final, but in the two seasons since, as the gap between League and championship form has yawned, attendances at the final have been poor.

The current Division One comprises 14 teams, two sections of seven. This is six more than was the case in 1997. This dilution of the quality of the top flight has had a disastrous impact on the attractiveness of the fixtures. Tomorrow, the inaugural day of the new season, features only one match with any real spectator appeal, that between League holders Galway and All-Ireland finalists Offaly.

What had looked like the main event when the schedules were released, the rerun of the 1999 All-Ireland final between Cork and Kilkenny, has been postponed because Kilkenny aren't back from their holidays yet.

Matches involving less competitive counties have become excruciating. Since the fixtures schedule became too tight to facilitate play-off matches for teams level on points, scoring average decides final placing. This gives the big counties an incentive to murder weaker opposition rather than gently let them down.

Last week saw controversy about the GAA decision to raise admission prices to £7. Leaving aside the hypocrisy of counties' complaining about decisions in which they were involved and from which they benefit, there was one central issue: the public is suspicious of the League.

Not alone is there a plethora of unequal matches, but no one can be sure to what extent the action they're watching is genuine. The big credibility problem is that the link between spring and summer performances is almost entirely broken.

Of last year's All-Ireland semi-finalists, only Galway had reached the League playoffs. Of the counties who reached the League play-offs, two (Limerick and Waterford) were beaten in their first championship match.

Even Galway, who have always had a structural interest in advancing in the League, no longer regard success in the competition as any sort of a benchmark. At a forum organised by sponsors Allianz during the week, new Galway manager Noel Lane spoke guardedly about the circumstances surrounding his appointment.

"While we were making progress, we weren't making it in the championship, so I suppose people just wanted change," recognising the realities that had forced out predecessor Matt Murphy, despite the county having won last year's League.

For the GAA's Games Administration Committee there are hard decisions to be made with championship schedules extending out from the summer. It's not an enviable task and is complicated by the perception that hurling is being shunted about to cater for an expanded football championship (a view privately expressed by three county managers this week).

To save on fixtures, the GAA should just take the financial hit and scrap the play-offs. Re-institute the eight-team Division One and simply declare the team that finishes top League champions, using scoring difference if necessary. That would take seven rounds. If that's too much, reduce the top division to six and make it five rounds.

Hurling needs the calendar-year even more than football. If the NHL is pushed into the autumn next season, it will be back to square one after the optimism generated by the experiment of four years ago.