MacCarthy Cup is screaming for a rejig

Seán Moran On Gaelic GamesI'm not saying I get swamped by public response to this column, but it's possible to get a good idea of what topics are exercising people by monitoring the inbox. A good few years ago, probably during the consultation and debate that preceded the introduction of the qualifiers, when the structure of competitions was topical, the response to any such columns was surprising.

It wasn't just the - hmmm - volume (often in double figures) of replies, but the number of suggestions and proposals for how the championships and the whole season could be organised. These communications arrived thick and fast - 19 in all. Some were very interesting, others a bit cracked. The topic is again current after a weekend that has swelled the rising tide of misgivings about the structure of the senior hurling championship.

At this stage what's the point in further hand-wringing over the state of the Leinster hurling championship without doing something about it? Is there any point in attempting a quick fix or is the answer simply to sit tight and wait for Dublin to arrive as a senior force? The crisis of competition in the province has been a reality since Offaly's great team of the 1990s drifted away and the county fell off the gold standard.

Kilkenny's excellence - in terms of their developmental work and the translation of raw material into senior success - is only half the story. The rest of the narrative concerns how lowly the fortunes of the other counties have sunk. A decade ago three different Leinster counties won the All-Ireland in four years.

Leinster chair Liam O'Neill is correct to identify the struggling counties as his priority rather than the importation of Galway into the eastern province. The point of having a competitive championship is that it signifies the health of the game in the other counties, not that it occasionally leads to Kilkenny being beaten.

Blaming Galway for the crisis in Leinster is unfair. The county has arguably suffered more than it has gained by its isolation in the west and has always been a willing participant in any innovation. In the 1960s they entered the Munster championship, but at a bad time for the county and before the Coiste Iomána initiative bore fruit, so the track record was poor and, as was pointed out to me, the experience a bit dislocated, as Galway felt no great involvement in the province.

Galway supported first in 1996 the cessation of their guaranteed access to All-Ireland semi-finals and five years later their similar right of passage into quarter-finals. Wexford and Offaly have much to do at developmental level, having fallen so far behind Kilkenny - whose exemplary production line stemmed from a moment of clarity following failure to win an 11th successive minor provincial title in 2000 - and Dublin. But that's a matter for the longer term.

Immediately there has to be concern about how to package a championship that is more competitive. At present in Leinster that's not possible. The provincial system in hurling has always been an awkward construct because at its best it had only two functioning competitions and now it's down to just one, making the question of the Munster championship even more urgent. There is no doubting the mystique and history of the hurling championship in Munster - it is after all the only hurling province in the country. It has a long and storied tradition but at the moment it's killing the concept of a well organised All-Ireland.

The primacy of the provincial system is based on the claims of the Munster championship. It maximises interest and promotional opportunity for the GAA in early summer, and with the three-match Limerick-Tipperary encounter that was again in evidence. But the circumstances are overstated. The Munster counties draw crowds because they are five of the top eight counties and matches are more often than not competitive - attendances at Kerry's hurling matches when they were involved were an indicator of what happens when fixtures aren't.

One of the reasons for dumping the current eight-team quarter-finals, which had become the first sensible and fair format for all counties, was that the Munster championship was suffering because its five counties were felt to be guaranteed an All-Ireland quarter-final place.

Yet, there was no evidence of this being the case and the events of recent weeks didn't suggest such a prospect had noticeably dimmed the desire of Limerick or Tipperary to win a provincial semi-final.

Even if there was such evidence, why should the well-being of the one functioning provincial championship be at the expense of the game nationally? There are different options for organising regional-based systems on a more rational basis. Pat Daly, Croke Park's Head of Games, has devoted much thought to streamlining the championships in innovative ways and published his ideas annually in the report to congress.

Three years ago he advocated dividing the MacCarthy Cup counties into a number of smaller conferences that would retain local rivalry, but fit the grouping to the counties rather than vice versa. The overall problem isn't about Leinster; it's about the failure to identify a championship format that caters for all the counties in a position to contest it.

Top teams don't play each other often enough at the optimum time of year. If it hadn't been for the qualifiers we'd still be waiting for first championship matches between neighbours Offaly and Tipperary, and Wexford and Waterford. The MacCarthy Cup is screaming for reorganisation. It's not Munster's fault or Leinster's fault or anyone's fault; it's just the way things have turned out.