Well the Championship is just around the corner so I thought I scribble down a few notes on how the new structure works.  ‘cos it can get confusing given that the format has been chopped and changed numerous times since the back-door was introduced back in 1997.

So here goes…..

12 teams will compete for the Liam McCarthy.  Five from Munster (Clare, Cork, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford), five from Leinster (Kilkenny, Wexford, Offaly, Dublin and Laois), one from Ulster (Antrim) and one from Connacht (Galway).

The five Munster teams will compete for the Munster Championship.  No change there.  The big change is in Leinster where Galway and Antrim join the other 5 Leinster counties to compete for the Leinster championship.

What about the Ulster championship?  Well it will also be played as before but the winners don’t qualify for the Liam McCarthy cup.  So even if Down or Derry get the better of Antrim, they stay put in Ulster.

Galway going into Leinster is the most intriguing change given the the Tribesmen traditionally have had to watch from the sidelines while the Munster and Leinster counties got to know each other in the heat of battle.  This move will put Galway in the same boat as everyone else while threatening (a little bit)  Kilkenny’s hegemony in the province (the Cats have won 10 of the last 11 finals).  Historians will recall that Galway competed disasterously in the Munster Hurling championship from 1959 to 1969 (winning only one match - against Clare I think, but I stand to be corrected) but that was a different era for Galway hurling and the Tribesmen can expect to be more competitive this time round.

The Munster and Leinster championships will be played on a knockout basis and the draw sees Cork play Tipp in one q/f and the winners face Clare in the semi.  In the other semi, Limerick play Waterford.

In Leinster, the q/fs are Offaly v Wexford, Laois v Galway and Dublin v Antrim.  Kilkenny have a bye into the semi-final and the draw for the semi-finals will be made once the q/fs are complete.

The Munster and Leinster champions go straight into the All-Ireland semis.

That’s the easy part.  Here’s where it gets a bit more complicated.  There are three phases and a set of All-Ireland q/fs which decide who plays the provincial champions in the semis:

• Phase I involves the first round losers.
• Phase II involves the provincial s/f losers.
• Phase III involves Phase I winners versus Phase II winners.
• The All-Ireland q/fs involve the provincial final losers versus the Phase III winners.

Got that?

Phase I

Let’s for arguments sake assume the following first round results (these results are for illustration only and do not represent what will actually happen ):

Offaly beat Wexford

Galway beat Laois

Dublin beat Antrim

Tipp beat Cork

The 4 losers will drawn out of hat to play two matches in whats being called the Phase 1 Knock-out. So for example we could have Cork v Wexford and Antrim v Laois.  The 2 winners will progress to Phase III.

Phase II

Phase II will involve the losers of the Leinster and Munster semi-finals.  Again for arguments sake let’s assume Limerick beat Waterford and Tipp beat Clare in Munster.  The draw has not been made in Leinster but let’s just try some crystal ball gazing and assume that Kilkenny beat Dublin in one semi and Galway beat Offaly in the other.  That leaves us with Waterford, Clare, Dublin and Offaly in Phase II.  Again an open draw will pair two teams against each other e.g. Waterford v Clare and Dublin v Offaly.  The two winners will progress to Phase III to play the winners of Phase I.

Phase III

Phase III will see a Phase I winner play a Phase II winner.  The draw will be made to ensure that teams who have already played each other will be not be paired up again.  So assuming Cork and Antrim emerge from Phase I and Waterford and Dublin from Phase II, the pairing Dublin v Antrim cannot happen again.  As a result we might have the following Phase III pairings:

Cork v Antrim

Dublin v Waterford

All-Ireland Quarter-Finals

Let’s assume Kilkenny beat Galway in the Leinster final and Tipp beat Limerick in Munster.  The Phase III winners will now be paired off in the All-Ireland q/fs and, as with Phase III, repeat pairings will be avoided.  Assuming Cork beat Antrim and Waterford beat Dublin, we could have the following two q/fs:

Galway v Waterford

Limerick v Cork

All-Ireland Semi-Finals and Final

The winners of the quarters will play the provincial champions in the semis.  The draw will be made to ensure the provincial champions will not face the team they defeated in the provincial final.  For example, in the above scenario, if Galway overcame Waterford, they would then face Tipperary in the semi-final as they had alreay lost to Kilkenny in the Leinster final.  The semi-final winners play the final on the 6th of September.

That’s it in a nutshell.  Well actually there’s more….

Relegation/Promotion

To decide who gets relegated from or promoted to the top tier of 12 counties competing for the Liam McCarthy cup, there are further rounds of games.  Phase I and Phase II above produce 4 losing teams.  These teams will play off in Round I with a Phase I team being drawn against a Phase II team (repeat pairings will be avoided).  For example we could have:

Wexford v Clare

Laois v Offaly

The two losers from Round I will face each other in Round II e.g. Clare might face Laois.  The loser of this match will play the winner of the Christy Ring Cup to decide who will compete in the Liam McCarthy Cup in  2010.

So there you go, I hope that all makes sense.  And that you completely ignore my various assumptions above

FaceTheBall.com update: I had my best week yet and jumped from 21st to 9th position.  I’m 76 points behind the new leader who goes by the name of SixPointsUp.  Here’s hoping I can hold my top ten position after the final round.

Yellow Card update: In case you haven’t heard, the experimental yellow card rules in place for the league were voted down in this weekend’s congress.  They needed a two-thirds majority and came agonisingly close to that with 63.8% of the vote.