As of from next year, counties beaten in their provincial football championship will now either take part in the All Ireland qualifier series or the Tommy Murphy Cup. This proposal means that instead of four rounds of qualifiers, there will only be three, with the eight teams in the new Division Four all confined to the Tommy Murphy Cup, although any of those counties who reach its provincial final can take part in the round three qualifier.

Teams who have already met in the provincial championship will no longer be protected from meeting each other in the qualifiers, although provincial finalists will no longer be preordained to meet in All Ireland semifinals, a la Cork and Kerry in 2005 and 2006, and cannot meet in the quarter-final stage.

The traditional rota system will be in effect, however, at the semi-final stage.

The first two rounds of the qualifiers will be run off at the start of July to help create windows for club championship fixtures either side of that period. There will also be a four-week gap from the end of the national football league to the start of the championship to cater for club games.

The All Ireland hurling final will now be on the first Sunday of September, with the football final on the third Sunday of September.

Speaking in favour of the motions proposed by his Football Task Force, chairman Paraic Duffy told delegates, "At the moment the club player can't plan holidays, he can't plan weddings, he can't plan anything. We felt as a committee that club players are rebelling. This is not going to solve the problem but it's a small start."

Duffy had encouraged that the proposals would only come into effect in 2008, but the majority of the floor agreed with the sentiments of Offaly's Michael Sheridan that, "We can't afford for the club player to put this off until 2008."

Ned Quinn's Hurling Development Committee's championship proposals to merely tweak the qualifier format of their predecessors received a lukewarm response. Cork secretary Frank Murphy instigated the objections by arguing that no team who loses two championship games should remain in the senior championship and that the identity of next year's eight All Ireland quarter-finalists was already known to all.

He suggested that the proposals be only allowed on a one-year experimental basis for 2007 and that a new set of proposals should be drawn up for next Easter's Congress in Kilkenny. This received support from the floor, where, as president Nickey Brennan, the meeting's chairman, noted, there was a mood for "radical change".

The most vociferous advocate for change was Dublin's Michael O'Grady who called for the provincial system in hurling to be abandoned.

"Kilkenny have Leinster wrapped up for the next 10 years, " he said. "Before long we'll be playing Leinster senior finals in Parnell Park."

He also called for the scrapping of the national league, with the championship run on "dare I say it, a Heineken Cup style format with home and away".

Ultimately it was agreed that the counties in consultation with the HDC will draft new proposals for next April.

For 2007 though, Quinn's proposals will be in operation.

One qualifier group will consist of Galway, Antrim and the first-round losers in Munster and Leinster (which in 2006 would have been Limerick and Dublin), and the other made up of the four beaten provincial semi-finalists (which in 2006 would have been Waterford, Clare, Offaly and Westmeath), with the top two in each group qualifying for the All Ireland quarter-finals.