Saturday's special hurling congress is being held in Rosslare because of a general desire to mark the 1798 bicentenary by staging a major GAA event in Wexford. It will be an appropriate commemoration as on this occasion the revolution promises to be as successful as the bloody rebellion it remembers was doomed.

In the absence of any decent counter-arguments, discussion and debate on the championship reforms will be low-key, but it's certain that by the end of the day the measures will have been retained for at least another two years. The inexorable process of adapting to the world of a reformed championship will have begun.

It is significant that of the four motions relating to the senior championship on the clar, three propose the continuation of the format by which defeated Leinster and Munster finalists progress to the All-Ireland stages and one proposes a minor alteration. In other words not one proposes a reversion to the old system.

These proposals were the work of the Hurling Development Committee, who developed the ideas and then vigorously sold them around the country. As a result of these preparations, the debate at the 1996 Congress in London was at least informed. Anyone looking back on the speeches from that afternoon will be struck by how those in favour of the reforms have been vindicated by events and how wide of the mark the opposing arguments have proved.

It is therefore hardly surprising that two and a half years later, after two hugely successful hurling championships, the arguments against the reforms haven't become any more convincing.

In favour of the proposals were the stated needs to promote the game by providing more matches or, more accurately, occasions which would showcase hurling. Given that inter-county activity is the shop window for the games, reforming the championship was the obvious path to explore.

The financial spin-off would also assist hurling by generating increased revenue for coaching and equipment. This aspect of the package has caused some negative - if thoughtless - comment to the general effect that "it's all about money". Yet this finance will amount to £400,000 this year and is projected at £1,500,000 over the next three years.

Its disbursement includes grants to every county board and provincial council. Funding also extends to a research and development programme which has explored inter alia the production of a carbon fibre hurley (a prototype of which is expected to be displayed in Rosslare this weekend), standardisation of sliotars and score detection devices (as used in tennis).

Among the arguments ranged against the proposals were the damaging effect of diluting the championship's knockout format. Former president Con Murphy told delegates in London that the reforms were artificial and would not be acceptable to the public. His namesake Danny Murphy, who was to become acting secretary of the Ulster Council, also expressed the view that the new system would lose public and media interest.

Whereas these concerns have proved spectacularly misplaced, the peculiar notion of the sanctity of the knockout format remains. Sudden-death is a system for running a competition not a defining characteristic of a championship - as evidenced by the counties who use alternative systems for their own club competitions.

In fact there's a case to be made for the proposition that the format is damaging to the game. By limiting the number of decent matches in what is already a limited field (17 counties against 32 in the football championship), unmitigated sudden-death is actually a promotional disaster.

Offaly had backed themselves into a corner over the proposals by the time their county meeting decided to oppose the renewal of the reforms in Rosslare this weekend. Having so resolutely opposed the idea all along, the county could hardly have turned around and decided to back it just because they had become the first county to win an All-Ireland after losing a provincial final.

What's strange about Offaly's position is the arguments deployed. Their own county championship is run on a league basis so they can't validly advance sudden-death as a principle.

To say, as they have, that their club schedules have suffered as a result of winning the All-Ireland smacks of the heroic insularity which was evident in Derry when they got rid of All-Ireland-winning manager Eamonn Coleman four years ago ("People think there was no football in Derry before we won the All-Ireland but we always had a good county championship").

CLUB ACTIVITIES always suffer when a county team does well in the championship but it's an inconvenience most affected counties are happy to tolerate.

Galway have tabled a motion to create an open draw for the quarter-finals - involving the beaten Leinster and Munster finalists and the Ulster and Connacht champions. This has had the unfortunate effect of shelving the idea that the Ulster champions should be allowed play their quarterfinal at Casement Park.

That proposal had been on the table as a reasonable way of handicapping one of the beaten teams in Munster and Leinster as well as providing an incentive for the Ulster champions.

It perished because Galway are basically looking for the opportunity to get an easy ride into the All-Ireland semi-finals (although when reviewing this year's quarter-finals, there's no guarantee they'd have beaten Antrim last July).

Then there is the argument that Ulster and Connacht teams are disadvantaged because they don't have the opportunity to lose a provincial final and still progress to the All-Ireland stages. But this ignores the relative quality in the provinces. Connacht (Galway) has won two serious All-Ireland championship matches this decade, which has a year to run. Ulster's representatives have won none.

Of the 12 counties who competed in this year's Munster and Leinster senior championships, nine have contested provincial finals this decade so the reforms are of fairly wide application.

The reformed championship has disconnected itself from the Leinster and Munster finals. Strictly it is the winners of the semi-finals in both provinces who advance to the All-Ireland series, rather than the losing finalists.

The part of the experiment which hasn't worked out so well is the intermediate championship, where the junior teams from the traditional counties have proved too strong for those counties whose first team has been graded intermediate. Motions from Wicklow and Westmeath to re-activate the old B All-Ireland accordingly have merit.

Whereas the two championships might not appear closely connected, the governing concept has been the provision of an optimised competitive environment for all county teams. Allowing for the intermediate adjustments, hurling is heading in the right direction.