WITH hurling's season now down to the endgame, a couple of reflections are in order before succumbing to the abandon of wall to wall All Ireland final hype. Semi finals are odd occasions. Winning them is never - with rare exceptions - more than a transient source of happiness, occurring as they do in between winning provincial titles and contesting All Irelands.

Within this halfway house is as good as time as any to look at issues halfway between the field of action and the committee room. The weekend marked the last staging, for at least two years, of the old championship structure. From next year, beaten Munster and Leinster finalists will reappear in a new All Ireland quarter final round where they will face the Connacht and Ulster champions.

Next year will also see teams in League action through the summer months. Last weekend's double bill at Croke Park was a timely reminder of what the new system hopes to offer over its experimental two year trial.

The attempt to synchronise League and championship will benefit the secondary competition, whose outcome in recent years has drifted further away from championship relevance as teams have dug deeper and deeper for high level summer fitness.

Offaly and Kilkenny in recent years have won the All Ireland after a winter in Division Two of the League and two days ago, we saw four semi finalists constituted of the National Hurling League champions and three teams who spent the recent League in the second division. Two of these are now in the final.

For the Ulster and Connacht representatives, Ant rim and Galway, Sunday may count as a sad day, their last year of reasonably unfettered access to semi finals. The championship will get tougher now and there is unhappiness in both the north and west. Neither was able, however, to raise an accusing finger at the reforms by qualifying for the final.

In Saturday's Irish Times, former Antrim and Down manager Sean McGuinness took hitter issue with the new proposals. His is not alone an authoritative voice in Ulster hurling but a representative one. Few hurling people in the province see the reforms as anything other than a disaster and a betrayal.

Politics contributes to a sense of isolation amongst GAA people in general north of the border (where Ulster hurling is concentrated). So, for the hurling community, does geography, and what is seen as a diminution of their hurling championship and their efforts to nurture the game - deepens that sense.

It can manifest itself in a readiness to take offence. In the aftermath of Antrim's semi final with Limerick, the team's elder statesman, Terence Sambo McNaughton hit out at a perceived slight from Wexford manager Liam Griffin - supposed to have described Antrim as part time hurlers, an allegation Griffin denies.

Quite how the general concerns about the game's future can be addressed isn't clear. Some of them spring from a general conservatism - principally the belief that there wasn't much wrong with the status quo - and some from a resentment that hurling north of the Dublin Galway line doesn't count within Croke Park.

McGuinness's line of attack doesn't encompass the exclusion of Ulster champions from the semi finals as of right but rather the dilution of the Leinster and Munster championships pure knockout nature, and that is an argument which will be dealt with presently.

He also expressed fears that the decision to rain the League and championship simultaneously would undermine clubs and contribute to the creation of an elitist group of players, primarily inter county and with little time for their clubs.

Implicit in the argument is the belief that this will afflict Ulster counties in particular.

Only experience of the reforms will resolve matters. Either they fail and create the chaos predicted by pessimists - in which case the trial period will be the end of them - or, as is the belief here, they will work well and be accepted without further contention in two years.

IN advance, it's hard to convince the Ulster hurling community that there's anything in the new proposals for them but equally hard for them to convince others that the game will suffer dramatically as a consequence.

In Galway, where the reforms were supported, there is also some resentment that Munster and Leinster teams are getting a second go at the championship and that Connacht and Ulster have been relegated to a subordinate status.

The proposals are seen in some quarters as primarily designed to suit Munster and Leinster provinces where it's quite possible to slip into a final without meeting any stiffer opposition than the Ulster champions have to overcome in their provincial final.

A theme in Galway that would also find an echo in the north is that the new championship scheme is merely an exercise in logistical gymnastics to avoid an open draw All Ireland. The vested interests of the Munster and Leinster councils are seen as being behind opposition to the open draw.

This runs particularly poorly in Galway where the county has to fund hurling largely on its own, without the sort of provincial council disbursements from a fund, swollen with championship gate receipts, that is available to Leinster and Munster counties.

What is frequently overlooked in Connacht and Ulster is that the new championship structures do in fact strike a blow against the primacy of Munster and Leinster finals. In the two years to come, the All Ireland championship's structure will essentially run from Munster and Leinster semifinals into All Ireland quarter finals.

The Munster and Leinster finals will have some bearing on where teams slot in, but otherwise will have to stand on their own merits. Traditionalists can't have it both ways. Either these provincial finals are important enough to inspire ambition in the contestants or they're not.

It, on the other hand, they in fact derive their importance from being stepping stones to the All Ireland, they must fall into line with moves designed to strengthen the appeal of the All Ireland. In short, the advice to those affronted by the undermining of the sudden death concept in the Munster and Leinster finals is, simply, ignore them and go to the semi finals instead. There, the fear of losing and its drastic consequences will be in full bloom.

What people shouldn't lose sight of is that the splendour of this season's hurling championship and its riveting televised matches cannot be guaranteed to repeat itself under the current system. From next year, there will be more matches involving good teams and that at least expands our chances of being able to relive the wonders of the summer of 1996.