With the National Hurling League about to start, Matt Murphy, who took Galway to last year's title, has called for football and hurling to be administered separately.

"Right now the GAA is predominantly football, about 70 per cent and the other 30 per cent is being squeezed. The GAA does not meet the needs of hurling counties. Hurling is a poor relation. The Games Administration Committee is the most powerful committee in the GAA and there are two hurling people on it. Yet it decides the fixtures for everyone," he said.

"In a number of counties, like Galway, there are three committees, a hurling board, a football board and a county board. The hurling and football boards get on with their own games and their promotion and a central fixtures committee."

Murphy sees the application of this structure as being perfectly feasible at national level even though it creates obvious difficulties for dual players.

"I would honestly say that there aren't more than about 10 serious dual players at intercounty level. They might be as well off deciding to play one game rather than to be burning themselves out. David Tierney (Galway's only dual player) was being pulled in about 20 different directions."

He views with scepticism the controversy about Galway's influence on the Hurling Development Committee's proposals for a reformed championship.

"They say the plans appeased Galway. They have not appeased us, they have made it twice as difficult. Why shouldn't everyone come in at the same stage and play the championship on a league basis with the top teams getting into the playoffs? The same number of games for everyone and then a knockout system."

This weekend, the league begins a month earlier than first envisaged when the decision was taken to run the league on a calendar basis. Murphy makes the point February is a particularly inappropriate month for league hurling.

"Playing three games in February is a problem for county teams. You're in the middle of the Fitzgibbon Cup and the All-Ireland club matches are on. Third level students are always going to give the Fitzgibbon precedence and the club championship has become very import ant. Then you've a glut of games when pitches are far from their best, and in June, July and August, hardly any."

Murphy has led Galway to league success on two occasions, 1996 and last year. In each case he was replaced as manager the following autumn, despite the county enjoying its best championship for years last summer.

"You have to remember the set-up in the county, which means that every two years there's a vacancy for the manager's position. You have to take the democratic wish and come through it even when it's not to your liking.

"There's more to life than running the county hurling team, and if the Galway public don't want you, there's nothing you can do. In the cold light of 10 or 15 years time, people will accept that we did something to bring Galway hurling along, that we did it no great disservice."