If journalism is history's first draft, historians must be kept quite busy. As former Kilkenny All-Ireland captain Liam Fennelly said earlier this week: "The three-in-a-row is something that happens in the record books."

Yet journalism, rooted in present, is eager to the point of anxiety that some of the events and trends unfolding before us will indeed go on to become landmark moments for posterity's retrospective gaze.

Such self-deprecating asides out of the way, we'll proceed to the historic happenings of the weekend just passed. Thanks to the concept of the All-Ireland qualifiers, the 2004 season is heading for a momentous conclusion.

History is being made, however, on opposite ends of the scale in football and hurling.

Fermanagh's achievement in reaching a first All-Ireland senior semi-final prompted the genuine question on Saturday: was this the biggest upset ever?

In a way it's patronising given Fermanagh's CV up until last weekend and their wins over Meath, Cork and Donegal, scalps if not as prized as previously would still have been considered a respectable collection for a more prominent county.

In another way the question is valid, given the way in which the history of the occasion as expressed by Fermanagh's poor record against Armagh and the county's overall lack of success combined with the contemporary reality of their opponents' juggernaut reputation.

For more than a century the provincial system perpetuated the misery of the likes of Fermanagh by becoming a strait-jacket for their perennially down-trodden ambitions. That lack of confidence in the face of unvarying opponents eventually became paralysis.

With the qualifiers came deliverance. In the four seasons since its introduction the new championship format has framed significant achievements by a number of counties, Westmeath, Sligo, Limerick to name the three most obvious besides Fermanagh - all of whom recorded their first significant victories on the outside track.

Ironically, in the introductory year of 2001 Fermanagh would have had less warm feelings towards the format. Having overcome Donegal in the Ulster championship (under the guidance of John Maughan, who manages Mayo against them in the All-Ireland semi-final), they promptly drew the same opponents in the qualifiers and collapsed on the day.

Nonetheless the evidence of these four years is that the opportunity to play more matches and against different opponents has radically brought on teams, a stimulus acknowledged by the relevant counties.

The sense of adventure in the football championship has become palpable as a result. Expanding possibilities mean the chase for the All-Ireland has become more competitive than ever before. Now down to its last six the competition is in giddy disarray. It's anyone's. Kerry deserve to be front-runners but does anyone want their house on the Munster champions in the current climate?

The golden age of Dublin-Kerry rivalry in the 1970s and '80s featured a 13-year period in which the counties shared out all but one All-Ireland. In an expanded 22-year timeframe, 1969-90, the title only went to Munster and Leinster teams.

Last Saturday saw 56,000 attend the Armagh-Fermanagh and Mayo-Tyrone quarter-finals; in the 1980s attendances at some All-Ireland semi-finals numbered little over 20,000. Greater participation means greater interest. To echo the nostrum de nos jours: competition is good.

Meanwhile the hurling championship is no closer to spreading the growth of the game in a similar fashion to football. The provincial system probably did for those prospects decades ago. With its superior skills requirement and at times stifling sense of tradition, the game has never really budged beyond its original boundaries.

There's not much that can be done about that. Even the quibbles about not giving equal weight to football refer to the symptoms of the problem rather than the problem itself. No matter what encouragements are offered by the second game a footballer in Kilkenny is always going to be like a hippy in Sparta - flying in the face of a rather intense tradition.

By this stage counties have their traditions and changing them is virtually impossible. Within football there has always been a semblance of competitiveness but for the hurling equivalent of Fermanagh - hmmm, maybe Fermanagh - what earthly chance would they have of beating the All-Ireland favourites in a championship match?

But hurling too is making history, albeit of a different kind, and the qualifiers have been just as influential as in football. Kilkenny are a match away from their first three-in-a-row since 1913 and for the first time taking over at the top of hurling's roll of honour, which would be a significant feat given that closest rivals Cork and Tipperary had each won six titles before Kilkenny won their first.

Such possibilities exist because of the qualifier system that allowed the champions to regroup and relaunch their challenge, as Offaly hurlers and Galway footballers had done before them.

It has been pointed out that Waterford's good-news story has been blighted by the qualifiers in that they have now lost two semi-finals to counties coming through the qualifiers whereas in the past they would have arrived at that stage with most of the other big trees felled.

Then again Waterford benefited from the original relaxation of the knockout format when reaching the 1998 All-Ireland semi-final and who's to say the suspension of sudden death didn't create a more reassuring environment for the 2002 Munster final?

Kilkenny's progress may resurrect the old canard about helping/not helping the weaker counties. The idea that the current dispensation assists the traditional counties is correct at the moment because Kilkenny and Cork both lost in their provinces this year but the law of averages says Waterford will over time do better out of the qualifiers than their aristocratic neighbours.

Anyway, the purpose of any championship changes should be to create more opportunities for teams, rather than merely enhanced terms for the less successful. What the current hurling championship gives us is the best team so far in the All-Ireland final. Any system that has as an end-result the reward of excellence and success for the best teams is doing its job.

The fact history is being made at an elite level in hurling and at a more democratic level in football does no more than reflect the consistent demographics of the two games.