A mixed weekend for the GAA as it comes to grips with the demands of the future. On the positive side, the All-Ireland football qualifiers were a success, attracting reasonable crowds, triggering a couple of surprises and producing an epic down in Wexford. In Aughrim, where Wicklow defeated Longford last Saturday evening, a big attendance and sunny weather had a real championship feel, with score-checks from other grounds adding to the atmosphere.

There's cause for early optimism that the new format will bring a new dimension to the summer and lead eventually to a league-based competition. In the meantime, the couple of extra matches represents an improvement.

But the hurling. Dear, oh dear. The direst predictions about the state of the championship were all franked in Leinster. Offaly's fourth trimming by Kilkenny in less than two years not only pulls down the curtain on an exceptional Offaly team, but leaves the province competitively null and void. This was evident a year ago and it was depressing to see how little had happened to alter the set.

Wexford will, accordingly, carry more than the county's hopes into the Leinster final. A win looks out of the question but a competitive display would improve morale all around. Otherwise Leinster hurling is facing a full-blown crisis. This is not hyperbole. There has only been one comparable period of Kilkenny domination, 1971-75, and those five years produced two epic Leinster finals with Wexford (the drawn 1972 and 1974 matches). In other words, there was a semblance of competition.

There was a certain amount of guff last year about the Kilkenny-Offaly All-Ireland proving that Leinster wasn't so bad but - as well as being wrong - that argument overlooks the central question. What's the point of provincial championships if they're not self-sufficiently competitive? Connacht recognised reality in abandoning the annual Galway-Roscommon turkey shoot and even Ulster is competitive, if not entirely on the same planet as All-Ireland contenders.

Admittedly Munster has more than delivered on its annual obligation to carry the early phase of the schedules. The emergence of Limerick blindsided everyone and is a fantastic development for the game in the south. Last year it looked as if Cork and Tipp had set the agenda for another of their periodic duopolies in the province. Limerick's achievement is a case study in turning around teams.

The only cloud on Munster hurling's horizon (apart from Kilkenny) is the venue controversy that has dogged the championship. All of the matches are to be played in Pairc Ui Chaoimh, leaving Thurles empty for the summer. It's hard to know what exactly the fuss is about here. If a competition is run on a knockout basis, the number of matches is minimised and also the opportunities for grounds to be used.

Given that Croke Park is the only major venue that isn't a county ground, all other stadiums are subject to home-and-away considerations. This includes Thurles. Whereas it has the best surface, access and capacity of all venues in the province, it remains Tipperary's home ground. Other counties like playing there, but not always if they have to play Tipp.

Thurles has been prominent in recent years with the rise of Clare and, to an extent, Waterford. Neither has a ground capable of taking a big championship match so, unable to strike reciprocal deals, their matches generally gravitate towards Semple Stadium. It has also benefited Pairc Ui Chaoimh because whenever Clare or Waterford encounter Tipperary, Cork is the obvious neutral venue, now that Killarney appears to have been struck off the roster.

There was trouble on the terraces at Pairc Ui Chaoimh at the weekend with crushing relieved only by gardai letting people out onto the pitch. This was largely caused by inebriated latecomers and raises the matter of spectator behaviour. Arriving late for matches has long been seen as an inalienable cultural right.

It is frequently encouraged by the authorities' willingness to postpone matches by a few minutes or more in order to facilitate latecomers. If people are twisted turning up for matches, they simply shouldn't be admitted.

The main problem with Pairc Ui Chaoimh is that without renovation work its capacity will simply reduce beyond the stage where it's viable for big matches. Safety restrictions will drive down its capacity in the same way that Croke Park was threatened in the late 1980s - lending urgency to the redevelopment project - and the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick will become the province's second ground with a capacity of 51,000 when current refurbishments are completed.

In 1971, the McNamee Commission stated (3.25): "If attendances are to be maintained, not alone increased, a conscious and determined effort must be made to woo the spectator." And (3.26): "It is vital therefore to think of an attendance at a match not as a statistic or a conglomerate mass of people, but as a grouping of individual spectators."

Thirty years on, wooing the spectator is still an ongoing project. In the absence of a rational hurling championship and adequate facilities in which to view it, the wooing will be going a while yet.