Seán Moran On Gaelic GamesWithout wishing to hustle my humdrum, quotidian output to unjustified prominence, I was nonetheless struck by a phrase used during an interview, printed in this paper yesterday, with Galway county chairman Frank Burke. "Hurling," he said, "is being analysed to death."

It's easy to understand what he's getting at. The search for significance and the at-times-exaggerated concerns about the future are subjecting a simple and exhilarating game with deep shafts of tradition to carping and excessively detailed analysis.

Patrick Kavanagh in his poem Who Killed James Joyce? lamented the over-analysis of another icon of national cultural:

"What weapon was used

To slay mighty Ulysses?

The weapon that was used

Was a Harvard thesis."

In a more modern idiom, Ger Loughnane addressed the same issue when questioned after Clare's breathtaking draw with Galway in 1999: "Don't always be looking at the end result lads," he said. "Enjoy the road a little. That was one of the greatest spins you could have there today. Good road, breathtaking scenery, the lot!"

He was of course right, and at the time it looked as if hurling would go from strength to strength with plenty of competition for the big prizes and gathering public interest.

Seven years on, however, and it was a rather more disgruntled Brian Cody who had this to say to reporters after Sunday's snooze-athon in the Leinster final: ". . . it's fashionable now to knock the game of hurling and knock the quality of the standard that is out there all of the year . . . Our agendas are slightly different I would imagine."

Again this is understandable. Kilkenny had just breezed the provincial title for another year and yet Cody knew the overview of the situation would not be positive. The county are dominating Leinster to a historically unprecedented degree and are well placed to start dominating the All-Ireland any year soon.

The county's own attitude to winning Leinster is more one of ticking another box than a great surge of jubilation. The post-match scenes as Kilkenny pick up another Bob O'Keeffe Cup are legendarily underwhelming compared to the ecstatic throngs that greet less practised winners.

But that happens when a county is so far ahead on the roll of honour. Should Kerry win this Sunday, for instance, there'll be no need for smelling salts in Killarney.

So on the broader issue, is the pessimism that surrounds the hurling championship a valid point of view or a contrived overreaction built on the media's need for portentous copy? There are aspects of the current situation that support Burke and Cody. Hurling has always been geographically limited, and over a century that hasn't changed. The game's elite have been part of an exclusive club.

Cork, Kilkenny and Tipperary have won 70 per cent of the All-Irelands between them so there are grounds for arguing that there's nothing new about this present dominance.

That's not the full story though. Should any of the three leading counties win this year's All-Ireland in September, that title would equal the record sequence for successive victories by Cork, Kilkenny and Tipp - eight, last seen almost exactly a century ago between 1902 and 1909. So even by the standards of their traditional hegemony, they have a particularly strong grip on the contemporary scene.

This is the 10th year since the abolition of championships organised on a purely knockout basis. That period has coincided with the re-emergence of the traditional counties after a phase, now wistfully referred to as "The Golden Age", when five All-Irelands in a row were won by teams from outside the big three. It was as if we'd never know another unequal day.

Now it's sometimes bitterly remarked that the system does nothing for the weaker counties. Which is true but irrelevant. The system was never intended to do anything for weaker counties per se. It was intended to give more matches for all and bigger occasions for the marketing of the GAA.

That's been achieved to the extent that the season is seen not to really start until the end of July and the All-Ireland quarter-finals.

The expanded format has also made it more likely that the best team will win the All-Ireland. Statistically that means more likely that Cork, Kilkenny or Tipperary will win the All-Ireland. But what can be done about that? No sport could seriously want a system that undermines its best teams, and it is accepted the only way in which others can improve is by playing more championship matches at the optimum time of the year.

Similarly, the current push to fast-track Leinster and Munster champions to the semi-finals will disproportionately benefit the counties who most frequently win provincial titles and tilt the level playing field that obtains at the moment with the top eight all having to play quarter-finals.

It is possible to detect a hankering after a past when everything was simpler. Good teams won and having negotiated the tedium of playing one match a month from May to September contested All-Ireland finals. The rest just watched. Lesser teams didn't have to parade their inadequacies at high summer, and all knew their place.

For some, the intercounty season is an out-of-control juggernaut and regression would be attractive. There would be less pressure on the clubs, and Croke Park doesn't really need the extra revenue from the longer championship programme now the stadium debt is nearly paid.

Nonetheless, there is a philosophical and practical difficulty with such redefined ambitions. The world doesn't stand still, and unless the GAA is moving forward it will be stagnating. Other sports use television to promote their biggest events and gain recruiting advantage as a result.

Within the past 10 years Croke Park has done well to evolve its products. It needs to take an interventionist approach to hurling if it truly believes the game can be developed beyond present boundaries. If not, better use has to be made of the eight or nine counties that can plausibly claim to be competitive in the MacCarthy Cup.

In other words, just because things aren't really worse than they used to be is no reason to accept the status quo. The future will set more relevant standards than the past.

smoran@irish-times.ie