June 3rd start for Dublin

GAELIC GAMES/2007 Leinster championships: Next season's Leinster championships will begin a week later in keeping with the decision of last month's special congress to create a four-week window between the end of the National Leagues and the start of the championship.

There seems to be ambiguity over whether this break was meant to be applied across the board or simply from the date of an individual county's elimination from the spring competition.

The Leinster football championship is scheduled to start on May 13th, which would have been three weeks later than last season's league final. According to Leinster Council secretary Michael Delaney, the switch didn't cause a major revision of available dates.

"It's not too bad, as we would normally have kept a weekend free anyway in case of replays," he said.

"We're starting a week later and as a result have had to fix one Saturday match in both the hurling and football. The counties involved were given the option of taking a Saturday evening or the June Bank Holiday Monday and they were unanimous in opting for the Saturday."

This means that Laois, under the new management of Liam Kearns, will face the winners of the midlands derby between Longford and Westmeath on the Saturday of the Bank Holiday weekend in Tullamore, the day before the big Croke Park clash of champions Dublin and whoever emerges from the pick of the first-round matches, Meath v Kildare, which is also fixed for Croke Park.

The draw didn't throw up any great dilemmas over venues, as happened last year when Dublin travelled to Longford's Pearse Park to take on the home side.

Hurling perseveres in restricting its Croke Park dates to the final on July 1st so there will be no double bill of provincial semi-finals on the 10th anniversary of the Kilkenny-Dublin and Wexford-Offaly programme that drew a record semi-final attendance of 52,079.

Next summer Kilkenny will face the winners of Offaly-Laois in Portlaoise on June 10th with Dublin taking on Wexford in Nowlan Park on the previous evening.

"Breaking up the semi-finals has worked well," according to Delaney. "Last season we had Kilkenny-Westmeath in Mullingar and Wexford-Offaly in Nowlan Park. Both matches had a bit of atmosphere, which they'd have struggled to create in Croke Park."

He added that the financial difference between staging the semi-finals in the headquarters venue and taking them to smaller provincial grounds wasn't a motivating factor. "That wouldn't make a huge difference. It's more to do with crowds. We've had to bite the bullet on this because the hurling championship is going through a bit of trough in terms of attendances and we have to recognise that but hopefully Wexford and Offaly can regain the competitiveness of the 1990s."

The remainder of the provincial championships will finalise their details over the next couple of weeks after consultation with each other and an input from RTÉ in relation to selecting broadcast fixtures.