Seán Moran/Gaelic Games: The days after the Munster hurling final aren't the most propitious to be considering a radical overhaul of the GAA's championships format. But, strangely, that's exactly what is getting under way in Croke Park.

Last week marked the first meeting of a committee whose deliberations have the potential to effect significant change within the association. Its remit is to come up with proposals for the intercounty league and championship competitions. The current systems in hurling and football are being conducted on an experimental basis, which has been synchronised to expire next year.

So the GAA's annual congress will next April take decisions which will shape the format of intercounty activity for the medium-term future. Naturally, the outcome of those debates will be of great interest to the whole GAA public, from activists to players to those whose only involvement is to attend matches. But it will also be very important.

There is a body of opinion within the GAA that bridles at the constant focus on intercounty activity, which it feels undermines the club and, by extension, weakens the association's whole ecosystem.

To be fair, there are arguments to support these misgivings: the way in which, in some counties, club fixtures get chucked out the window at the first glimmer of intercounty progress; and the impact on county revenues when club matches clash with televised intercounty broadcasts - to name but two.

The GAA has noted these problems and is trying to do something about them. But the association also knows that the intercounty schedules are vital to its future. Crowds and publicity are vital components of the GAA's well being.

Gate receipts generated are substantially Central Council's biggest source (at 72 per cent, far too big in commercial terms) of revenue. And the championships provide the overwhelming focus of GAA media coverage and promotion. With soccer saturating the airwaves, and even rugby raising its profile, the GAA needs to make the best out of what it has.

At present, Gaelic games are running hard to stand still. They are holding their own, certainly, but straining under the burden of the Croke Park debt while having to keep the show on the road.

For instance, games development and promotional expenditure has risen nine-fold over the past 10 years although revenues have increased at less than half that rate, by 425 per cent.

Consequently, the association will want to think long and hard about how it proceeds. What can we expect when the committee reports, as expected, in the autumn?

Paraic Duffy, the GAC chair during Seán McCague's presidency who piloted through the work of two other important committees, including the group that came up with the current qualifier system, is also involved in this new committee. He says that the net will be cast wide.

"The various Croke Park committees will be asked to feed their ideas into us," he says. "Our task will be to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the current structures and look at ways to make them better.

"Likely areas of concern would be the gaps between matches and, in hurling, the fact that the Leinster championship isn't as competitive as Munster. And what to do about these."

Duffy and the rest of the committee will be realistic enough to realise that what they believe to be best-case scenarios must still be subject to reality checks. As he says: "You can up with the best laid plans but you still have to get two-thirds of the delegates at congress to support what you're proposing."

It has become more common to hear the qualifier system getting knocked for inadequacies not of its making. All it was designed to do was give counties a second chance, a mitigation of the summary punishment on offer in the old, pure knockout format.

There are those who pine for a return to the old days of sudden death and that's their right, but such a perspective is unlikely to attract widespread support.

Most frequently heard is the complaint about the six-day break between losing in the championship and lining out in the qualifier.

This arises because dates for the qualifier rounds have to be fixed in the games diary. Provincial councils then run their schedules right up until the week before and, as a result, some teams get caught.

It's an unfortunate situation because it combines the disadvantages of round-robin and knockout. Having to recover and play within a week isn't uncommon in most field sports, but having to do so only to find that your season is finished after, at best, a handful of fixtures is unusually user-unfriendly.

There are two arguments in reply. One is that even with the six-day gap, for all the difficulty it creates, the system beats the alternative. Without the qualifiers Croke Park would be quiet this Saturday. Dublin's and Armagh's seasons would have ended in ignominy and their enthusiastic support bases would be silent.

Instead, there will be a huge crowd in attendance, plus an opportunity that would not otherwise have arisen for one of the game's top footballers, Tipperary's Declan Browne, to play in Croke Park.

Secondly, and of direct relevance to the six-day gap, is the fact that it's not that common an imposition on teams. Of the 150 times (75 matches) that teams have played in the five qualifier series since their inception in football two years ago and in hurling last year, on only 33 occasions has a team been asked to play within six days of its previous match.

Admittedly, 20 times that team has lost, but these aren't bad odds when you bear in mind that some of the losing sides would have lost even with six months to prepare. In other words, the six-day gap may be hard on certain teams at certain times, but it's not a gaping flaw in the system.

The other issues of more matches and, in particular, what to do with the provincial hurling championships can be more aptly addressed after the weekend's Leinster final. You've been warned.