Amidst the grumbling at present about the various arrangements for All-Ireland fixtures, you could lose sight of how transformed this time of the year has become. only two hurling quarter-finals.

The eight matches that will be staged in the coming weeks simply didn't exist at all a few short years ago. Even last year there were

The dilemmas facing the Central Games Administration Committee are largely the problems of success - where to cram those capacity crowds in an already full August programme.

CGAC chair Tony O'Keeffe has a point when he echoes president Seán Kelly's view that it's time to drop the protected draw after rounds one and two of the qualifiers. Having to wait until losers are positively identified after replays is holding up scheduling.

The whole idea of the protected draws comes from the first year of the qualifiers in 2001. The only two reservations that emerged from what was a successful inaugural year were firstly, the fate of Fermanagh who beat Donegal in Ulster, but had to play them again in the first round of the qualifiers and duly lost.

Secondly, with excitement high for the quarter-final draw, fate decreed that three of the matches would be re-runs of provincial fixtures already played. No one in Croke Park wanted the draw to turn out as it did. In fact, after the fixtures emerged, out in RTÉ where the pairings were taped as if live - until the impossibility of keeping them secret was conceded - GAA officials initially wanted to revert to the rehearsed draw, which had thrown up a more palatable selection of fixtures, but that idea was dropped.

Naturally, instead of getting sympathy for the deflating of their championship, the GAA instead found itself arraigned in the court of public opinion for conspiracy to fix the draw.

So it was decided to prevent the same thing happening any earlier than the All-Ireland semi-finals. Five years on, everyone's more used to the way the system works and whereas it's still awkward - as much for winners as losers - to have to face the same opposition at different stages in the one year, the sense of disorientation no longer exists to the same extent.

It's ironic also to observe the fuss kicked up by some of the hurling counties over the fixing of the All-Ireland quarter-finals for Croke Park. Four years ago the football quarter-finals were played at various provincial venues, apart from Meath v Westmeath.

The idea was partly a loose desire to reward the provincial champions with a draw in their home province (a proposal to give them actual home advantage had been defeated at the special congress of October 2000) as well as recognition of logistical realities.

In the event, only Dublin had to travel outside of their region - down to Thurles to play Kerry.

Ultimately, this made no difference to the other counties and only Galway v Roscommon was even played at a different venue to the initial meeting that season. But what did happen was that two provincial champions - Roscommon and Tyrone - had the tables turned on them and were eliminated, which led to complaints that despite their provincial success they hadn't got to play at Croke Park. In fact, it took Roscommon until 2003 to get a gallop in the new stadium.

Since then, the All-Ireland quarter-finals have been scheduled for Croke Park with only replays moving out of Dublin. That experience shows one essential difference between the football and hurling community. For the former, Croke Park is the great national venue; the latter are far more ambivalent.

One former inter-county hurler once told me that he wouldn't be bothered in the slightest were he told he'd never play at Jones's Road again. But were he to play his last match in Thurles - that would upset him.

So maybe it's not surprising that there has been much dissent at the decision to fix all four All-Ireland hurling quarter-finals for Dublin. Hurling is so regionalised that there's not a match between two of the top eight counties that couldn't easily be played at Semple Stadium.

Aside from considerations of convenience, there have also been complaints about the expense of travelling with family to Croke Park and the amount of time it takes to complete the return journey.

You'd seldom hear that from Armagh and Tyrone supporters who have made Croke Park a second - if not first - home in recent years. You didn't hear it from Fermanagh people who made four trips to Dublin last year between qualifiers and All-Ireland matches. But Croke Park is the centre of gravity for football in a way it obviously isn't for hurling.

There is also the slightly querulous tone suggesting that all of these extra matches have become an imposition: that in some way the old system may have been right after all, that having your county's championship season expanded to current levels brings additional demands on your time and further expense.

But the numbers still climb. Perhaps the next two weekend's quarter-finals will bring a disappointing attendance, but crowds will still be up on previous years by virtue of the extra day's double bill. And for those who believe that the attendance would be better by putting the matches on in Thurles, it's interesting to remember that in the first year of the quarter-finals, 22,826 turned up in Thurles for the 1997 Kilkenny v Galway fixture.

Who really would want to turn back the clock and revert to pure, distilled knockout format with its one-match seasons and tumbleweed weekends? The point here and in other areas of GAA activity is that time moves on and even if some of the old ways seem comforting and attractive they had disadvantages that prompted change in the first place.

The same goes for complaints about the hurling qualifier groups. What more can be done for the under-achieving counties short of handicapping matches? The new system involves a sequence of guaranteed matches at the optimum time of the year.

Most teams - with the exception of whoever gets relegated - will finish the season in better shape than they started it and won't have to sign off on the humiliations of some of their championship exits. Next year is another season and the effort can be renewed.

For all the complaints about the way things are changing, the GAA's evolution is typical of a robust organisation. In other words, all of its major changes have been for the better.