GAA/News: Pat Daly sees the future of the inter-county season as league-based, and proposes an end to the provincial format, writes Seán Moran.

Although the annual reports of GAA Director General Liam Mulvihill tend to attract a great deal of pre-Congress publicity, another Croke Park official has been responsible for some thought-provoking commentary in recent years.

Mulvihill himself drew attention to the Games Overview section of the Congress report. The work of the GAA's Head of Games Pat Daly, it is a broad-ranging document covering the recent history of change in relation to games and competition structure, suggestions for further radical reform in those areas, the area of discipline and the development of coaching.

Of most interest will be proposals for a revamped inter-county season. Daly accepts that "the nature and the rate of change at national level in the six-year period since 1996 has been more radical than at any period since the foundation of the association".

Daly argues that this period of change has been subject to ongoing adjustment and that in such a context, plans in 2004 to lock in a structure for five years must bear in mind the requirements of the games and players in the medium term.

He goes on to outline the two key issues to be addressed from a games development perspective: providing club players with a regular programme of games - 20 matches over an eight-month period - and the restructuring of the national fixtures schedule in order to optimise the marketing of the games.

"The full marketing potential can only be achieved when teams get a spread of games in properly promoted competitions in which they have realistic prospects of success.

"The fact that there is no grading system in place in the championship means that uncompetitive counties are common and some - generally the smaller ones - have no real prospects of success. All counties will have to accept the reality - as some already do in hurling - that there is no point participating in competitions when the prospects of success are so remote as to be practically non-existent."

He goes on to point out that adherence to a pre-planned programme of matches - a necessity if club fixtures are to be properly protected - is practically impossible when inter-county competition is based on the knockout format.

Accordingly proposals for change in the inter-county sphere are based on league formats.

"It's important," Daly writes, "in the interests of fairness that competitions are structured so that counties play the same number of and get an equal distribution of games."

The most radical aspects of the championship proposals are that they avoid the provincial format and exclude some counties from senior level. They also presuppose that the club championships would be concluded before the leagues begin (last Sunday in February for football and first Sunday in March for hurling).

In football a league of four divisions of eight counties would play on a round-robin basis. The team at the top of division would win the NFL without play-offs.

The top 20 counties in the NFL would compete for the Sam Maguire and remaining counties for what Daly proposes to call the Mick O'Connell Cup (he advises against referring to such competitions as B or Intermediate or shield).

These top 20 would be divided into four groups of five teams - based on province in as much as possible but not exclusively - who would play each other home and away. Counties with the best record of their province would be declared provincial champions. The top two teams in each division would go into an open draw for the All-Ireland quarter-final. Counties from the same group would not be drawn against each other before the final.

In hurling the same format would apply with the difference that the Liam McCarthy Cup would be for the top 10 counties, what he calls the Christy Ring Cup for the next 12 counties and what he calls the Mackey/Rackard Cup for the next 12. The additional two counties would be London and Dublin Fingal (the north county).

The top 10 teams in the McCarthy Cup would be divided into two divisions of five with the top two teams from Munster and Leinster in the same division. Their divisional match would be the provincial final. The top two teams in each division would qualify for the All-Ireland semi-finals.