Nuala O Faolain, Sunday Tribune, 20 August 2006 A shame that Nuala O Faolain wasn't at last weekend's Special Congress in Croke Park. She'd have stood out from the serried ranks of Worried Hurling Folk (hereafter WHF) for a number of reasons, one of them being this. Nuala at least knows what she's for. Most of the furrow-browed WHF merely know what they're against.

Taken in isolation, admittedly, their arguments hold any quantity of water you care to name. One can see what Frank Murphy was driving at when he repeated John Allen's oft-stated contention that the Munster champions should receive the carrot of a bye into the All Ireland semi-final, decried the waste of money inherent in the qualifiers and railed against giving counties more than one second chance. One can nod sagely at Noel Walsh's assertion that the qualifiers take up all of July . . .

"and for what?" And one knew exactly where Michael O'Grady was coming from when he predicted that three provinces weren't functioning, that the Leinster final would soon be held in Parnell Park and that a switch to a Heineken Cup-style championship was a logical way forward.

In their differing ways, O Faolain and the WHF are motivated by the most noble and understandable of wishes: a natural sense of fair play and the understandable . . . all the more understandable in an environment which has seen each of the last five All Ireland senior finals going to either Leeside or Noreside . . .

desire to see more counties in with a realistic chance of success.

But yet again the WHF expect the Hurling Development Committee to devise a solution that will cure all ills.

And the HDC can only do so much.

To give them their due, they certainly haven't been found wanting for ideas over the years. As Frank Murphy pointed out last weekend, we've been trying out different championship systems (back door for the beaten provincial finalists, back door for the beaten provincial semi-finalists, qualifiers, qualifying groups, four All Ireland quarter-finals) and chopping and changing them for the past decade, yet we're no nearer putting a definitive system into rule form.

You have to wonder if we ever will be.

Some realism wouldn't go astray yet usually does. Hurling's isn't a centrally-planned economy but a free enterprise market. While the HDC have striven in recent years to increase the degree of equality of opportunity, equality of opportunity does not and cannot guarantee equality of outcome. What's more, it should not.

The runners in championship events, just like the field in championship races like the Gold Cup and the Derby, must race off level weights. Irrespective of whatever way they go about it at next year's Congress, the HDC are not going to formulate a set of pulleys, levers, swings and roundabouts that will enable Laois or Westmeath to lift the 2008 McCarthy Cup.

The problem isn't the system. The problem is that there aren't enough counties out there who can make the system work in their favour.

And without getting unduly existentialist about it, the latter defect doesn't actually invalidate the worth of the system.

Imagine for a moment that Offaly and Wexford were as competitive as they were 10 years ago. Limerick, Wexford, Offaly, Galway, Cork, Kilkenny, Tipperary and Clare:

some All Ireland quarter-final lineup, eh? In that case you wouldn't be reading this article and they wouldn't have had the debate they had at last weekend's Special Congress. The mood of the floor was for radical change, which means that the onus has been put on the HDC to come up with yet another all-singing, all-dancing championship wheeze to be discussed at next year's Congress in Kilkenny. What a pity that the really radical development hurling is crying out for . . . substantial improvement by Offaly, Wexford, Limerick and Laois - is the one that the HDC can do nothing about in the short term.

And nice try with the handicapping idea, Nuala, but no dice. In the end, Clare and the other poor Clares of this hurling world have to do it for themselves. Improvement begins at home.