Hurling Championship:Munster counties are to support a revised proposal for next year's senior hurling championships.
This has been formally revealed in the annual report of provincial secretary Simon Moroney, which will be delivered to this weekend's annual convention.
The revised proposals emerged from discussions between the province, Leinster and the Hurling Development Committee (HDC), and mean that, as has been recently suggested, the champions of the two provinces will proceed straight to the All-Ireland semi-finals.
According to Moroney: "The council consulted with the six counties and considered the matter at a meeting on 21st December 2006 and agreed to support the latter (revised) proposal from the HDC in an effort to achieve consensus at congress for a definite proposal. In the event that this compromise proposal is accepted, it will bring certainty to the structure after a long period of experimentation."
In addition to the Munster and Leinster champions gaining immediate semi-final access, there will be under the proposals a round-robin qualifier between Galway, the Ulster champions and the two beaten quarter-finalists in Leinster and Munster.
Counties defeated in the semi-finals of the provincial championships will play each other on a crossover draw and the winners will play the top two teams from the round robin. The survivors of that will face the beaten Munster and Leinster finalists in an All-Ireland quarter-final round.
If accepted - and all indicators are that it will be - this will mean the end of the four quarter-finals system that has been running for the past two years.
Based on last year's championship results, the "new" draw would have been: qualifiers - Galway, Antrim, Limerick and Dublin. The top two would then play the winners of Waterford-Westmeath and Clare-Offaly, with the winners of those matches facing Wexford and Tipperary in the quarter-finals.
Echoing a theme he raised last year, the Munster secretary goes on to question the future of the Railway Cup or interprovincial competition.
"My stated principal concern related to the timing of the series and the inevitable interference and clashes with the provincial club championships. There were significant difficulties and clashes again in 2006, and sadly the scheduling issue has not been resolved.
"There does not appear to be any appropriate time slot for the competition in light of the increasingly congested fixture calendar at inter-county and club level."
He also expressed concern at the potential effects of a decline in championship attendances.
"The overall trend is up for the hurling championship but steadily down for the football championship. The 2004 figures offer a valid comparison with 2006 insofar as there were six games played in both years and the replay in both cases involved a final replay. When compared, the cumulative attendance this year (2006) was down 32,475 on the 2004 figure."
Commenting on the financial review, which showed an increase in total income of 18.09 per cent to €7.43 million and a surplus of €191,917, Moroney cautions: "It must be borne in mind, however, that but for a) the replay in the senior football final and b) the hosting of the senior hurling final in the maximum capacity ground in the province, the financial outcome would be much less rosy."
