Sideline Cut: If this is the golden age of the championship, then perhaps we ought to be a little bit worried. Last Sunday was special. In the hotel in Clones, we watched the Limerick players dive-bomb across the Páirc Uí Chaoimh pitch and into heaven. Then we scooted up the hill, past the burger vans and the young lads swilling dregs of beer, concluding that there would probably be no more revolutions this afternoon.

Ninety minutes later, Clones spilled us out, damp and happy with that familiar feeling of having been thrilled and somehow violated. It is a town, contrary to popular belief, that clears incredibly quickly after championship Sundays. Walk down the hill from the ground at around 7.30 p.m. on any given Ulster championship Sunday and it is a desolate scene. It is like turning up at the ruins of a party that two hours earlier had been so hot that everyone present was just vaporised. Usually when a big name is knocked out - and in the last decade, it became habit for a neighbouring county to turn up and sack the All-Ireland champions - an electric charge hangs in the air for hours afterwards. You can all but smell the singed hair.

When Monaghan beat Armagh, the All-Ireland champions, the same exhilarating current was definitely palpable immediately afterwards. Only after Thomas Freeman's wonderful, individual point, when he leaped among three orange shirts to collect a ball and fired on instinct, did the Monaghan crowd dare to give full vent to oxygen in their lungs. Through the last five minutes, the press box was besieged by Monaghan men who had forgotten to bring their pocket watches.

"How long do you reckon?" "Ah, about three minutes." "Come on. She must be up now." "Eh, two minutes forty-five seconds."

When it was announced that there would be just one minute of injury time, Monaghan people celebrated as if receiving the news that Clontibret would host the next Olympics. It was a break the community needed and even the Armagh folk did not begrudge them their day.

But after the dust had settled and it was time to consider the events, things became a little more perplexing. The All-Ireland champions were beaten but of course were not out. Even the dead could see the rich passion that Armagh brought to this competition last summer. From that perspective, it would have been a shame if such a county was out of an epic competition even as it was just beginning. And it would have been a joke if the current player of the year, Kieran McGeeney, had been robbed of what in reality would have been the meaningful part of a full year of his sporting life because he was unable to play on this particular hour. The success of the qualifiers was that Monaghan had advanced in both esteem and confidence by defeating a major county like Armagh but that the prospect of a juicy Armagh/Galway or Armagh/Kerry semi-final for August is still on course.

And yet. This equivocation hammered home how truly quaking the old knock-out system was. A few years ago, everyone would have been reeling to adjust to the void left in the accepted order of things by the sudden exit of Armagh and Cork. Other imperial counties - like Galway playing tomorrow - would feel thoroughly queasy, as there would be much talk about this being the year of the serf.

Instead, all bets are off and you have to wonder where this enlightened and more forgiving system is bringing us. The reason last weekend's matches appealed so much was that they were wrapped up in the context of knock-out history of the competition.

Limerick and to a lesser extent Monaghan were breaking free of their own miserable championship legacies as much as from their immediate opponents. The reason why the country in general celebrated these games is because they rekindled the spirit of the knock-out days, those rare and magnetic hours when word of a "shock" materialising in one ground or another would spread like a gorse fire. It has not been said, but the true reward for Monaghan and Limerick would have been the infliction of a summer of idleness on their more illustrious peers just as they had been forced to twiddle their thumbs year after unheeding year.

Still in its infancy, the qualifying system is radically altering the way teams and counties think about the championship. Joe Kernan rightly identified Armagh's understandable lack of hunger or hatred as a reason they were unable to raise their game against Monaghan. The other thing they were unable to call upon was the inevitable desperation that the prospect of leaving the championship visits on teams.

Armagh looked flat but never desperate. Similarly, locked as Cork were in their fugue state, it is hard to believe they would have been just so uninspired in the last quarter if they knew their championship season was on the line. Cork won the Munster title last year in slightly embarrassing circumstances and the players hardly covet more of the same medals. Dismayed they may have been at the manner of their loss, but a trip across country might be to their liking when they sit down to think about it.

It was impossible not to be moved by the way Monaghan played in Clones last week. They played nice football and were deliberate and composed in the way they ambushed Armagh and they refused to allow the loss of a man be their excuse for another defeat. It was an engrossing game but you wonder just how memorable or appealing it would seem had it been a league game. Similarly, how special would Limerick's achievement seem in the context of a league system? Because slowly but surely that is the format that the championship system is drifting towards. Already there are advocates for the Champions League type format. The reasons for it are sound, with more teams getting more games and counties potentially achieving higher gate receipts, and the chasm between strong and weak gradually bridged.

But what it could also do is dilute the basic cut-throat appeal of the championship to its irreversible detriment. Last year, one player said he would gladly carry a limp for the rest of his life to win a provincial medal. This was someone who was reared to see the provincial throne as king, as a worthwhile summit. Within a few short years, a century of provincial history has been eroded and the value of winning one of the four localised cups has been lessened if not cheapened.

Here is the worry. That soon - not this or next year but soon - the first round of the championship will be a blunt instrument. That the novelty of the qualifying rounds will wear off in time and that when the big dance comes around it will be the same dresses on show - the maroon, the gold, the sky blue and so on.

That if the new system loses its appeal, counties trying to better themselves will end up playing meaningless games without any hope of advancing to anywhere tangible. Then the old days of one full-blooded charge against a mighty neighbour with just an outside prospect of glory might be deeply appealing indeed. But by then the provincial system will have been buried for too long.

You could argue the merits of the New Deal all day long. But handing out second chances like candy may do no county any good in the long run. If we really want to advance the cause of the poor counties, maybe seeding is the answer, with only a finite number of lower tier counties given second chances.

That, of course, is a catch 22 because it comes back to the old problem of teams putting in serious hours for potentially just one hour of football. But before we scamper towards the bright new future, we would do well to look at precisely what we are leaving behind.