On Gaelic Games: Even by its standards as a cruel game, hurling has provided more than its usual quota of Marquis de Sade moments during the current NHL campaign.

The cruelty is that of a particularly skilful pursuit that combines its high level of technical requirement - even slight skill differentials resulting in massive scoring differences - with an unbending caste system that makes the acquisition of necessary skills dependent on history and traditions.

Occasionally there are eruptions amongst what might be termed the bourgeoisie and power shifts slightly but such movements extend the realistic competitive base to no more than nine counties.

Of these, six have won the All-Ireland within the past 10 years whereas the remaining three, Galway, Limerick and Waterford, are waiting for around 20, 30 and 50 years respectively. Everywhere else is a void. Only twice in over 50 years has one of the remaining counties even reached the final in early September.

The statistics about the three-headed domination of Cork, Kilkenny and Tipperary (70 per cent of senior All-Irelands between them as well as the last six - a sequence unparalleled for nearly 40 years) are so well known, it raises the question as to why everyone's so worked up about the current league structures when the championship continues to be such an oligarchy.

The answer is to be found in what have been commonly perceived to be the invigorating qualities of the league. This has its roots in the arrival of Offaly and Galway at hurling's top table in the 1980s.

Offaly felt that the county's special permission to participate in Division One of the NHL in the late 1960s was instrumental in the county's rise - although its main breakthroughs were championship based, principally 1969's astonishing defeat of then All-Ireland champions Wexford and the subsequent running of their successors Kilkenny to two points in the Leinster final.

Then again the Offaly coach who took the county to the top, Diarmuid Healy, always maintained that reaching the final of the 1981 NHL - where admittedly they lost to Cork - was a key influence in convincing them that they could win an All-Ireland.

That may seem strange for a side that were Leinster champions for the first time and had run All-Ireland champions Galway very close the previous year but the league has the advantage of allowing counties a crack at aristocracy from outside their own province.

Galway's arrival (or return) as a force was signalled in winning the 1975 league title and three years before that the under-21 All-Ireland. But the importance of spring competition was pronounced for a county that had no provincial championship.

But for all these positive antecedents the current situation is benefiting nobody except the strongest counties. Although they learn little by administering punitive beatings, the innovation of the top six or phase two of the NHL gives them three high-quality matches at the right time of the year as tuning-up opportunity for the championship.

That aspect of the current structure is mentioned elsewhere on this page by Games Administration Committee chair Tony O'Keeffe as one of the reasons why he believes there is no significant pressure coming from the counties to make changes. In other words the weaker counties wish to cling to Division One status whereas the stronger sides can jog through phase one before intensifying the approach in phase two.

A couple of counties will get left out of this accommodation and Waterford in particular can't be happy about spending the run-in to their championship opener against Cork handing out trimmings to Down and Antrim - and of course Offaly fell foul of a major systems failure when getting relegated last year - but overall there isn't a clamour for radical change.

This means that there will be no change in the league structures until 2007 at the earliest, as no county is going to agree to change without having been given a season's notice.

Of course glacial rates of progress won't benefit the league and it is up to Central Council to drive the situation forward and order that the top two teams in next month's Division One group two join the group one counties in a traditional eight-team top flight for next season.

A new Division Two should consist of only six teams, four from this season's group two and the two finalists from this year's Division Two final. There's no point in extending this section because the depth of competition wouldn't be there - arguably Offaly's presence will skew it anyway for next season but the kinks have to be worked out of the current structure.

Let the top three in Division One and the winners of Division Two contest semi-finals or simply let the top two contest the final. Either way the NHL would have a more credible programme of matches, which would enthuse both the teams contesting it and the spectators, who have been conspicuously voting with their feet during this year's campaign.

But there are two sobering realities about even such a straightforward remedy: one that because Central Council represents counties, it is unlikely to force a change that doesn't suit them and two that ultimately it is the championship that requires reform, in the shape of a round-robin format that will bring the best teams together at the optimum time of the year for both the game itself and the enthusiastic audience that wants to see hurling at its best.