HDC went as far as they could with reforms, says English

The Hurling Development Committee (HDC) went as far as they could with the reforms presented to Saturday's special congress, according to committee member and All-Ireland winning player and manager Nicky English.

In a rare break from tradition, the congress was left with people complaining the reforms were not radical enough, particularly the hurling ones. The hurling league was expected to get an immediate revamp for 2007, with enthusiasm for the existing format hitting an all-time low.

Yet to satisfy the interests of Dublin and Antrim - who would have dropped straight to Division Two - it was decided to hold off on the changes until 2008, thus allowing counties to "earn" the right to play in the top flight.

And the hurling championship will effectively continue as it is, the only notable change being in the two qualifier groups that follow the provincial championship. Rather than being drawn into groups, Galway, Antrim and the first-round losers in Leinster and Munster play-off in one qualifying group, and the second group is made up of the beaten semi-finalists in Leinster and Munster.

"I think you need to look at where the HDC were coming from," said English yesterday. "It was set up a couple of years ago to look at various proposals, and particularly the qualifier system within the championship. I think the qualifier system we have now is better, but the problem is the number of teams competitive at that level has actually decreased over the last couple of years.

"And last year in particular we had a lot of dead games. But the whole thrust of the HDC initially was to have more competitive games for the top teams over the summer, and it has allowed that. Again, the big problem is we're down to three or four teams who are really being competitive. So the solution is not as simple as some people are suggesting."

These minimal championship changes will be adopted only on an experimental, one-year basis, rather than the two years originally recommended, and it's now expected that far more sweeping changes will be introduced at the 2007 annual congress in Kilkenny in April.

Again, however, English was slow to give his backing to potentially more radical opinions: "Some people are saying now we should have gone for an open draw, and I'm not saying we shouldn't, but maybe we should move it on to a Champions League format. But that's very radical. And you'll still have the same old problem of having a lot of dead matches simply because the number of competitive teams just are out there.

"But, to be honest, there was no way the boat was going to be pushed any further. It took a lot to get these proposals through in the first place, and what went through at the weekend is only a slight modification of that, and an effort really to speed things up a little. But there was huge resistance to those proposals though in the first place, because by putting in quarter-finals, they were seen as diminishing the provincial champions."

There were two options for the revised hurling league format - an eight or nine-team first division, with the nine-team version being preferred. It allows for each team to play each other (four at home, four away) with the top four teams to play-off in semi-finals, and then the final - but that won't now come in until 2008.

"I just don't think there's a whole lot wrong with the championship system that's there," said English. "I mean, the big issue for hurling right now is to reignite the actual capabilities of winning the All-Ireland of, say, the Wexfords and Offalys and Limericks. But at the moment we're doing pretty well to even have quarter-finals with the amount of teams that are actually competitive. And that's the real issue."