And of course there has been a lot of talk last week, what with the movement of certain fixtures to new dates in Division 1A of the hurling league.

I have to say it has got a little bit awkward and I can understand the frustration shown by counties who have had their schedules reworked.

Of course, there should have been allowances made for games being postponed and similar matters but if you look at what has happened, the association has taken a view that a particular league shall be played in its entirety in that championship year. Because of that, the framework for the national leagues is from the first Sunday in February to the last Sunday in April.

I'd like to think I am a futuristic-thinking person and sooner rather than later we will be in a position to adjust to a more suitable degree for everyone involved. I don't want to pre-empt what way the adjustment will be made but with floodlighting in various grounds, it will be possible to play matches either midweek or on either Friday nights or Saturday nights.

But that has not been possible this time around and, as I said, I can quite understand the frustration shown by people in various counties in recent days. It wasn't an easy situation for anyone. But if we look at what emerged this year and look at the table of fixtures, the anticipation would have been that you could lose matches in the month of February. But it would have been unlikely that you could lose games in late March so that was a bit of a banger. We had provisions earlier in the year and our regulations indicate that when we lose a match, we play that match at the next available opportunity.

I'm not going to secondguess any of the comments made by people within various county boards this week or what they were meant to say.

But in fairness to the three games in round five of division 1A, the sequence of games has been postponed a week to make sure all sides have the very same opportunity.

All the teams play next Sunday and they will all know what they are required to do to meet their various objectives.

And it would be unfair if that was disturbed. It would have given certain sides advantages in knowing what results they needed while others would have played while being unaware. For us, that wasn't a situation we wanted to see.

There was an alternative.

You could have played the round five games and the deferred Cork and Wexford match could have been played a week later. Whichever way it was done, we were going to lose a week and the quarterfinals and semi-finals in division one were going to have to be pushed back. But in the overall and in deference to the situation it was better to have your round five with all the teams going in with a balance.

There is also the situation surrounding player welfare and how it might affect their every-day plans and I absolutely understand the situation and how players have a game on a weekend they thought there was none. But it's inevitable that now and again this will arise and we're fortunate it doesn't happen too frequently.

All I would say is that, in the effort to find a solution, consultation was made with both Cork and Wexford as well as the other counties involved in 1A, just to get their views as to how difficult it would be for them, depending on the path we took. And at the end of the day somebody was going to be burdened and that's regrettable but the first round of the championship starts on the first Sunday in May and you don't want to be getting into that with the league hanging over people.

Not everybody agreed to what was on offer but they were consulted. There were a number of options put to each county and they were asked for their own views. Some indicated that it would be very difficult for them, some of the counties indicated that it would be less of a problem.

But when that entire process had concluded, it was seen in the overall that this was the fairest option. And in line with the regulations laid down by the association, we had noted that any forced postponements would be refixed for the next available date and that's another reason why this game has gone on the earliest possible date.