WINTER IS COMING

Hurling’s previous attempt at a round-robin series was less than profitable and saw a dramatic decline in attendances

Hurling now demands that every blow is a funeral in the making

TOMORROW morning one half of the GAA nation will hold its breath while the other gets to hold its nose. Even allowing for its low intoxication threshold, the giddiness which has infected hurling this summer is merited.

Anyone who doubts that should tune into the first round qualifier draw on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland where the game’s top three ranked teams from last season – Tipperary, Kilkenny and Waterford – will be housed.

Meanwhile, the football draw will offer up Leitrim, Tipperary, Westmeath (yes, we are being presumptuous) and the losers of last night’s Monaghan/Down Ulster semi-final who will be paired against either Wexford or the winners from today’s qualifiers between London/ Carlow, Offaly/Cavan and Armagh/ Fermanagh.

Health and safety alert with this one – go light with the milk on the cornflakes or you may drown.

Here’s the thing, though, next year only one of those draws will be coming to a radio near you and it won’t be the one that will have you chomping on your digits instead of your toast.

Counties are currently in the business of tweaking a proposal that will bury the hurling qualifiers for good and radically alter the tempo of the provincial championships.

Only time will tell the wisdom of that move but it is rooted in hurling’s gnawing, and quite possibly destructive, sense of insecurity.

For the most part that insecurity is harmless, finding expression in ushering unfortunate minding-theirown-business tourists in front of the pub television and demanding a compliment.

‘Have you ever seen anything like it? It is the fastest game in the world you know…’

Or by insisting that no visiting VIP can tread red carpet without being photographed with a hurley in hand, even though the irony that some Chinese diplomat has a better chance of pucking a sliotar than a young buck in Caherciveen goes over their heads.

It also demands that referees only keep time and scores because this is a game at its best when every blow is a funeral in the making.

But then hurling has so much to be proud of – a high-skilled game which stirs spirit and soul and gifts edgeof-the-seat drama with impressive frequency. Hurling has made that happen, too, by rigorously and ruthlessly ensuring that it protected its integrity as a spectacle.

This decade, we have already seen the reduction of teams taking part in the Liam MacCarthy Cup. We’ve seen Galway absorbed into an enlarged Leinster Championship where the weaker counties have to gain access to both the knock-out phase and the All-Ireland series by going through a qualifying process.

In setting a merit barrier, and in providing a tiered championship for developing counties, hurling has created the model which many in football pine for.

As a result, hurling’s desire for this radical overhaul is more difficult to comprehend. The format as it stands is not perfect – not least the five-week lay up for provincial winners – but that would have been addressed next year in any case when a condensed Championship schedule sees the All-Ireland finals moved forward by three weeks.

Of course, there are benefits to this new proposal which will see the provincial championships played on a round-robin basis, ensuring 10 more hurling Championship games – from 26 to 36 – if it comes to pass.

It will most likely mean increased revenue while, developmentally, it should aid those teams on the make.

But it would be wrong to ignore the trade-off. The removal of the knock-out element at provincial level will take away more than a little intrigue while a Championship that feeds of its ‘life or death’ gravity may now become infected with dead rubbers.

Hurling’s previous experience with a summer round robin was less than happy or profitable – the qualifiers embraced that format from 2005 to 2007, which saw a dramatic decline in attendances before it was eventually abandoned.

True, qualifiers are less attractive by nature, but that still does not explain why just 12,000 spectators turned up to watch Cork play Tipperary a decade ago.

Above all, though, those scenes of spontaneous outpourings of joy that we have witnessed in Semple Stadium and Wexford Park in the last few weeks will not be replicated again in early summer.

It is hard to see where hurling’s structure is so badly broken that it requires fixing and yet easy to see why this has seen the light of day.

The reform proposals are not new – they were drawn up by the Hurling Development Committee (HDC) five years ago and rejected – but the renewed appetite to adopt them is a reaction to the emergence of the Super 8s in football, which will come into place next year. There were claims that hurling would be swamped as if children in Kilkenny would start making bonfires out of their sticks because eight extra games of football would be played in the summer.

The irony is that football’s decision to go down this road was just a desperate attempt to recreate what hurling already has – a fiercely competitive Championship that generates more fixtures between teams of equal status to showcase the game in the best possible light.

Football’s move was a tip of the hat in hurling’s direction, not an act of aggression, but hurling’s insecurity was such that it interpreted it as a finger in the air.

The hope is that they don’t live and play to regret it.