All-Ireland SFC Qualifiers Round Two:  As the back-door system comes under scrutiny, Ian O'Riordan talk to a man charged with freshening things up

Managers often psyche up their teams in mysterious ways, and when John Maughan talked about doing away with the football qualifiers it sounded like another tactic to ensure Roscommon gave it everything against Galway in their Connacht semi-final, rather than be thinking they had something to fall back on.

"I think the back door has run its course," said Maughan. "Championship can be a huge leveller. I remember in 1996 coming out of Division Three with Mayo before reaching the All-Ireland final. The championship itself has been disappointing so far this year. The winner-takes-all situation inevitably leads to greater crowd participation and excitement."

Roscommon ended up losing to Galway, and thus headed for qualifier avenue, yet Maughan reiterated his view, calling on the GAA to look again at the qualifier system. In the meantime, he gets his winner-takes-all situation in Navan this evening when Roscommon play Meath.

After five seasons, the football qualifiers have become a part of the championship, rather than a mere extension of it.

For the first year or so there were stories of teams unable to get their heads around the idea of being beaten while still in the championship. Now it's just accepted.

When Tyrone lost to Derry in their first game of the Ulster championship there was nothing like the clamour that followed Galway's similar loss to Roscommon in 2001.

But could there still be a better way? That's what Pauric Duffy intends to find out, having been appointed chairman of the GAA's new Football Competitions Work Group. Duffy also chaired the committee that came up with the original qualifier formula in late 2000, and helping him with his new task are the former Dublin manager Tommy Lyons; the Tipperary manager, Séamus McCarthy; two recently retired players, Dara Ó Cinnéide of Kerry and Kevin O'Brien of Leitrim; the Mayo secretary, Seán Feeney; and the Down chairman, Jerry Quinn.

"I don't want to pre-empt anything that might come from our discussions over the next few weeks," says Duffy, who chaired the first Work Group meeting on Thursday, "but I suppose the very fact that this committee has been set up suggests there is an acceptance to look at the structure again.

"Essentially, we've been asked to look at the football championship and the league and put some thoughts together, with a view to making some recommendations before the special congress in October. We'll take the views of the counties and as many people as we can, but it's definitely possible that we'll see a tweaked qualifier system next year."

The problem for Duffy and his work-group colleagues is there is no obvious way of tweaking the qualifiers to significantly improve them. When Roscommon beat Galway in 2001 and then lost to them in the new All-Ireland quarter-finals, it appeared the qualifiers could actually set teams up for even crueller defeat (especially as Galway went on to win the All-Ireland). But people got over that soon enough.

And there has been some tweaking along the way, such as keeping apart teams that had played already, and also giving defeated teams more time to recover. But in terms of achieving their primary purpose, Duffy believes the qualifiers have fully succeeded.

"If you think back to 2000, the biggest single factor that brought about the change was the frustration of county team players and managers that if you lost one game you're out of the championship and you're summer is over. You could lose to a last-minute goal or a controversial score, but it didn't matter, you were out.

"The main aim of the qualifiers was to make sure every team got a second chance. That introduced a new element of fairness in the championship that was never there before. I often said at the time that this wasn't the final solution, so to speak, and that it probably was a work in progress, which would require some changes over the years.

"But I certainly think it has worked well. There's no doubt we've had a better championship over the last five years, the crowds have increased, and we have seen some fantastic games.

"Just take my own county, Monaghan. We were beaten by Armagh after a replay at the end of May, but our championship is very much still alive. There's still a buzz about the county, and we're expecting a big crowd in Clones on Sunday week when we meet the losers of Wexford and Offaly."

Not surprisingly then, Maughan's suggestion didn't make sense to Duffy: "Of course everyone is entitled to their view, but he seemed to be suggesting a return to the knockout system. I just remember back in 2000 when we were putting the qualifiers together people were totally frustrated with the knockout system. I've seen a few different models suggested in the last couple of months, but that was only time I heard of us going back to the old system."

There is the option of seeding teams so early games would be more balanced. That would probably mean doing away with the provincial championships, something Duffy is sure we won't see any time soon.

"That's the crucial thing," he says. "Because of the provincial structure, it's very, very hard to come up with the ideal system. Once you're operating within the provincial framework you're really very limited when it comes to making changes.

"I know that if this new committee came back tomorrow with a proposal to abandon the provincial system I'd say our chances of getting it through congress would be between zero and 10 per cent . . . I know from talking to people it's just not going to happen."

When the qualifiers were introduced, most people were prepared to give them a go, though some argued they didn't go far enough. At the time, however, Duffy's committee was something of a salvage crew after the old football development committee, whose radical championship restructuring - based on a league format - always appeared doomed. Duffy suggests the swift death of those proposals probably limited their options.

"I think one of the main reasons why our system was so readily accepted was that it allowed the provincial system to remain. But coming off the back of the FDC, we had to come up with something a lot less radical, which essentially was to make sure the provincial system survived."

One enduring criticism of the qualifiers is that ultimately they have favoured the stronger counties. Duffy dismisses this, because, he says, it's stating the obvious.

"We never once said the qualifiers were going to favour the weaker counties. It doesn't matter how you run a championship, the weak will still be weak. Look at the World Cup, after all the qualifying rounds we probably had the eight best in the quarter-finals, six of which you could have named before the thing even started.

"When you come to the All-Ireland quarter-finals you will nearly always have the strongest teams there, and that's the way it should be."