A REVOLUTION in the world of the GAA took place over the weekend. There may be a long road ahead but the changes agreed by Central Council last Saturday are the first steps that lead inexorably to a very different future.

It's not merely the acceptance of the need to organise inter county hurling on the basis of a calendar year but the events that led to the decision and the potential consequences flowing from it that constitute a landmark for the game.

Three items merit attention: the way the reforms were piloted through by Frank Murphy, Pat Daly and the hurling development committee; the impact they will have on the relative status of league and championship; how the traditional relationship between club and county will be affected.

Saturday's vote was the second leg of a two part strategy to reform hurling. The first set of provisions governing the championship and most controversially proposing the readmission of the defeated Munster and Leinster finalists was passed by Congress last month in London.

Both these proposals and the ones passed by. Central Council were approved for a two year trial but unless the projections are badly awry, the trial should prove a success.

The significance of the proposals, the most radical reforms adopted in living memory, is in the way they were sold. It's important to remember that traditional hostility to innovation wasn't for want of intelligent suggestions.

Up until this year, a succession of hard working committees had deliberated and produced reports on a variety of topics only for their conclusions to fall foul of instinctive conservatism and its capacity for easy arousal.

Matters came to a head last year when a complex series of proposed reforms to the rules of hurling collapsed in chaos at Congress amid despairing suspicions on the part of the framers that the proposals hadn't even been fully understood.

So when the hurling development committee produced their reforms for this year, it was decided that a widespread plan of promotion and persuasion would be undertaken. A brilliant campaign was run even if an occasional sleight of hand was detectable, as with the unnecessary yoking of the senior reforms to initiatives at intermediate and junior level, presumably to tie in support among the less powerful counties.

Some opponents sought to protest a twee distinction between explanation and canvassing but it was mostly born of frustration at the discovery that the invocation of tradition and fear of change were no longer the right buttons to push.

As Congress did a month ago, Central Council on Saturday generated a debate noticeable for the sterility of the opposition. This is not to say all the concerns expressed were spurious or mischievous - although some were - but rather that they were repetitive and in no sense insoluble.

The changes may be far reaching but the means used to secure them will have an even greater impact. The GAA has always looked in dire need of some democratic centralism to counter the power of subsidiary units.

The hurling development committee has shown that careful planning and persistent promotion can go a long way towards extending the influence of Croke Park initiatives.

THE second main impact of the changes applies to the role of the National League and its relevance to the championship. There are several reasons the change to the calendar year is a good thing. The obvious good sense of bringing the league more into line with the better weather is by no means the only one.

For a start, it is slightly qualified by the fact that you frequently run the greater risk of death from, exposure in February and March than in October and November. The importance of the calendar year is as much in the timing as in the ground conditions.

In essence the closer the league and championship operate in tandem, the better the chance it gives weaker or emerging counties to optimise their championship effort. As Kerry's Tony O'Keeffe, pointed out on Saturday, his county never gets an extended competitive run at summer hurling because their league ends in March and their championship - with one exception in 70 years - hasn't outlasted their first appointment.

From an even more important point of view, the league is a vital marketing tool despite its secondary status. Whereas the open draw is rightly advocated as the fairest way forward, especially in hurling, the championship is only part of the equation.

Gaelic games - and hurling in particular - need a thriving league which provides counties with set fixtures over a narrowly defined period. If the game is to stimulate enhanced interest, there has to be greater guaranteed exposure for all counties than one match in a knockout competition.

There should be enough matches (and seven is only the bare minimum) spread at regular intervals throughout the late spring and summer in order to raise public interest in a coherent league; in other words, not one with a two and a half month wedge driven through the middle and which, as a result, takes seven months to dispose of seven matches.

Finally, there is the impact of the reforms on the most delicate relationship in the GAA: that governing club and county. It might have been a one trick pony but the plight of the clubs continually ran through Saturday's debate.

The fate of internal county competitions under the provisions of the calendar year has caused fairly extreme reactions. It was even suggested in Kilkenny (although not by their delegate at Central Council) that the county withdraw from the National League if the reforms went through.

Mickey Moran, the Derry delegate, said the calendar year would lead to the death of hurling in the county and that within two years Derry would be out of the league or the clubs would be dead. (Cynics would say that death within two years sounds like a lease of life compared to the status quo's effect on hurling in the county).

These dire warnings don't, however, add up. It is interesting that there are counties of all kinds - weak, strong, emerging, declining - on both sides of the issue, so it's not valid to say that one particular type is suffering disproportionately.

Cork is the most active GAA county in the country and certainly the one with the heaviest demand on dual players. It is reckoned, for instance, that 65 per cent of hurlers also play football. Yet Cork, also constantly contesting the later stages of both hurling and football inter county competitions, deemed the reforms worth a trial. In a county where their power is well established, Cork clubs nevertheless voted 78-5 in favour of the proposals.

In the end, Galway's Frank Burke summed it up best: "Unless we have the personnel to handle this sort of challenge, we're doomed anyway."

The challenge has been met and we'll see how it goes.