"We have very few flagships left, " the Munster Council chairman Sean Fogarty declared in the Cork/Tipperary match programme a fortnight ago. "The Munster championship is one of them." Instead of abandoning it, Fogarty added, let's consider having a counterpart to the Munster championship "consisting of the other strong hurling counties", the finalist in both groups to contest the All Ireland semi-finals and a mechanism for giving counties "a single second chance" built into the system at provincial level. "Getting the format right is like doing a jigsaw.

The Munster championship is a piece that fits."

Liam O'Neill, the Leinster Council chairman, expressed similar sentiments in last Sunday's Croke Park match programme. A new league-based format would, O'Neill asserted, "only make the strong stronger and would guarantee that a weak county will never make a breakthroughf Let us not replace our provincial championships until we are sure we are replacing them with something better."

What, if anything, the replacement will comprise will be finalised on 14 October at a special congress to decide the format for next year's championship. Following recent discussions on the subject, the Hurling Development Committee will be putting a set of proposals to counties by the end of this month or at the latest by mid-August. The biggest issue they're trying to come to terms with, according to HDC chairman Ned Quinn, is the question of how many national competitions hurling actually needs.

Just one, ie a league-championship? Or more than one, ie a championship and a stand-alone National League, as of now?

Which option will give hurling a greater profile? And would a league-championship manage to replace what Quinn, echoing Liam O'Neill, describes as "the good elements . . . a strong Munster championship and every now and then a strong Leinster championship . . . of what we currently have"?

There is no simple solution. There is no simple solution largely because we don't want a simple solution. The hurling community is more vociferous about what it's agin' than what it's for.

We want knockout provincial championships retained but we don't want heads to roll after just one game like of old.

We want a coherent All Ireland series but we want the provincial champions to receive some sort of carrot. We want every county to be assured of a sensible quota of matches but we don't want the clubs to be discommoded as a result. We now want the round-robin qualifiers to be scrapped ("they have to be changed and will be changed, " says Quinn) but we still want the Westmeaths to be catered for. We want Galway, the bluebottle in the ointment, to be looked after also.

Were the HDC to co-opt Pythagoras, Solomon and Einstein as members, this is a circle there is still no way of squaring.

Oh, and we want good matches all over the place.

And we'll complain to high heaven when we don't get them.

Frank Burke, the Galway county chairman, said a mouthful the other day when he opined that hurling was being "overanalysed".

Quite. This is a sport played at its top level by . . .

being very generous about it . . . 10 teams, and even that small cross-section contains a wild disparity between top and bottom. Of course we're not going to be treated to repeats of the 1947 All Ireland final every Sunday. Of course the qualifiers will throw up their share of mismatches. Much as one might yearn for a championship in which Dublin or Laois reach the last four, one cannot gerrymander it.

For all that, provincial success should be rewarded, the All Ireland series must have structure and logic. One final, two semi-finals, four quarter-finals. As was proved last year, there are enough decent teams out there to make the latter concept viable. Whatever about the many demerits of the Leinster championship, meanwhile, apply the humane killer treatment to it and Wexford, Offaly and Dublin might as well give up in the morning.

Though they're not going to be bringing home the McCarthy Cup any time soon, the existence of the provincial championship furnishes them with the opportunity to aspire to silverware at senior level. That's important too.

Finally, could somebody please strangle that irritating canard about Galway staying out of Leinster because they had a bad experience in Munster back in the Pleistocene Era or whenever? The reason Galway had a bad experience was because they were neither good enough nor organised enough at the time. Now they're one of the top three hurling counties in the land.

A pity they continue refusing to show even a smidgen of confidence in their own abilities and their own station.