Sunnier outlook for winters of discontent

These are usually dog days for gaelic footballers. As the travelling circus that is the football championship packs up for another year after the All-Ireland final, the minds of the 30 masochistic county managers who weren't involved turn to winter training.

And as the watery sunshine and gentle mists of autumn are replaced by muddy puddles and freezing fog of mid-winter nights, that fabled championship preparation can begin in earnest. For all but the chosen few this has traditionally been a long, fruitless trek towards an unattainable goal. Little wonder most footballers used to spend one half of the next six months complaining and the other half blowing on their hands to keep warm.

But this evening as they finish up at their offices or throw their tool boxes in behind the back door and leave for another tortuous night of training, they might just have the slightest hint of a spring in their step. Last weekend's ratification of the proposals for reform of the football championship was about a lot more than tinkering with the structures and providing a few more games during the summer, welcome as those innovations might be. It was a recognition that there are GAA voices outside of the committee rooms that have a right to be heard and have their hopes and aspirations addressed. It was also an indication that after years of playing the wise monkey, the GAA might now be prepared to listen.

It is only now that we can see the importance of the trail blazed by the Football Development Committee (FDC). Its members spent hour after painstaking hour putting together reform proposals and then attempting to sell them around the country. But in many places, not least here in Ulster, that hard work was greeted with, at best, a wary scepticism and, at worst, outright opprobrium. The objections raised were all predictable - where the clubs would fit in, the fate of the treasured provincial championships - and as the opposition stacked up against the FDC it became clear that the GAA grassroots were simply not ready to jump with them.

In Ulster the objections were grounded largely in the emotional bond with the provincial championship. While the football played may not always have been the prettiest, this has traditionally been the province where competition is most fierce. Witness the tumbles repeatedly taken by so-called sure things year after year, just when it seemed the imagined aristocrats were sorting themselves out from the peasants. It all made for a championship that was high on intrigue and could be guaranteed to attract crowds in larger and larger numbers.

But these sources of strength ultimately became the most damaging weaknesses of the Ulster Championship as was. It had long-ceased to be a nursery for football talent and a forum in which youth could be encouraged to express itself. Instead it became a jungle where, in football terms, it was a case of kill or be killed. Survival of the fittest might make a nice buzz phrase when scrawled on a dressing room blackboard, but it ignores the scores of players of genuine ability who simply fell between the cracks.

The biggest indictment of the old system is that we will never know what we lost and what might have been. Who knows how many great young players in Antrim or Fermanagh, outstanding underage and minor players in their day, simply drifted away from the game because they saw a senior GAA structure that offered them just one game a year at the end of a hard winter of commitment. Little wonder that they looked to other sports, most obviously soccer, to provide a level of competition that would be both more meaningful and more worthwhile.

Of course, one of the attractions of the old system was that every now and then it threw up a rogue result or two. Cavan's 1997 Ulster title, inspired by the guile and football brain of Martin McHugh, was held up by some as a shining example of the romance of the set-up and the way that every underdog could have his day. But the county's decline in the years since then tells you all you need to know about the bankruptcy of a structure that valued short-term achievement over the laying down of some more solid, long-term foundations.

In the months to come it is the Antrims, Fermanaghs and Cavans of Ulster's football firmament who will benefit most obviously from last weekend's changes. Now guaranteed at least two games next summer, there is a dangling carrot that might just make the application of the big stick on training pitches over the next few months a little more palatable. The move away, however tentative and non-committal it might be, from the do-ordie, all-or-nothing attitude that was allowed to colour championship preparations for generations can only be a positive thing. The hope is that it might be replaced by an approach that is just a little more constructive and far-sighted.

The benefits of that should be clear for all to see. This year's exploits of an Antrim side that had become something of a knockabout football joke in some quarters (including this one) would have warmed the heart of the oldest, most world-weary cynic. A team dismissed as no-hopers came within the length of Anthony Tohill's fingertips from knocking Derry, the National League champions, out of the championship and moving on to the provincial final. But it should be remembered that Antrim's magical few months began with a win in their first game over Down. Once they hit their stride and could face into a second game of the summer, something denied to them for two decades, they were a team transformed. For many in Ulster it was glimpse of how the future could be.

The incredible thing is the pace with which it has now all happened. A year ago the forces of conservatism rowed in against change and the possibility of progress seemed more distant than ever. Now, 12 months later, we are facing into a football championship which will be fundamentally altered come next summer, ostensibly for a trial period but in reality for ever. In terms of the lumbering way in which things have traditionally moved within the GAA, this is a revolution at breakneck speed.

The catalyst has been the emergence of the players as both a block of influence and a pressure group within the GAA. The first signs of this were apparent within Ulster before they began to be noticed in the rest of the country and it was here that the Gaelic Players Association first dipped its toes into the inhospitable waters of GAA internal politics. But for all the brouhaha that has been made about pay-for-play and player endorsements, it could be that the GPA has had its greatest influence and achieved its biggest success almost by accident.

A root-and-branch restructuring of the football championship structure may not have been part of its manifesto for a brave new GAA world, but it is now clear that these reforms were an inevitable by-product of providing a platform for players to air their grievances. For years those same players were whistling in the dark about the need for more games and the bankruptcy of a knock-out system in the GAA's premier football competition. It's just a shame it took so long for someone to listen.