A week into the GAA's twilight zone let's consider what strategists call the "bigger picture". The All-Irelands are over this weekend with the women's clash of Armagh and Cork. Yet the club championships are in the early stages with most focus still on the county titles, many of which aren't even at the final stage. It's still five weeks before the Australians arrive for the International Rules series.

It's what alarmists within the association have long feared: a time of national stasis during which the furtive pleasures of other sports may be experimented with because there's nothing else to do. This year's hiatus is partly due to the GAA giving the Ryder Cup some space but it's probably going to be part of the calendar in future.

If the recommendations of the recent draft report on intercounty competitions are accepted at next month's special congress, a number of changes to national leagues, championships and parallel competitions will mean additional free time during the summer. These proposals are well enough known. Briefly they involve reducing the number of weekends dedicated to intercounty fixtures by streamlining the leagues and taking football counties out of the situation of having to play Tommy Murphy Cup matches on top of qualifiers.

There were different motivations at work in the committees' work, which led to the proposals but a major influence was the rising clamour from clubs at what is seen as the increasing encroachment on their schedules by the expanding county season.

Managing this difficulty is one of the GAA's biggest concerns. There has to be a balance between the need for big occasions and an efficiently functioning elite level in Gaelic games and the requirements of a mass participation sporting body with a huge recreational membership.

On the one level football and hurling each needs spectacle, big events, mass media coverage and top players who are heroes to children following the games and who provide the type of exposure and promotion on which soccer, particularly, and rugby of late thrive - not to mention revenue.

But at what cost to the games' infrastructure? This has always existed as an issue but in recent years has become far more urgent, as the intercounty season has grown through the introduction of calendar-year league seasons and the qualifier series in the championship.

It has popped up frequently in the counsels of GAA director general Liam Mulvihill and various presidents. Like so many similar topics it is a case of trying to install some sort of a safety valve before the pressure from below erupts.

The target of 20 matches per season for club players has hovered like the Holy Grail rather than becoming a fairly straightforward administrative task. A survey some years back showed that virtually no counties were hitting this figure and some were struggling to reach 10 games.

But these dismal statistics didn't suddenly emerge because the intercounty season became longer. Back in the old days there was precisely the same tendency. The problem may owe something to impact of the county teams' schedules but it owes as much to county board incompetence.

This takes two forms: one a failure to stand up against the at-times crazy demands of county managers and two, a baffling administrative inability to get competitions over on time.

This summer word reached us of one county where an under-21 club championship match was called off at five minutes notice to satisfy the concerns of a manager who had just one player involved in the match. As a result 29 others got changed and went home or wherever.

A related problem is, in some counties, the club programmes are driven to completion but only by ramming everything through in the space of a few weeks, reducing the season for ordinary players to the status of a blitz and withholding the satisfaction of extended involvement, allowing for decent rest periods between matches as well as a measure of hype and excitement to build within the county.

Only last April GAA president Nickey Brennan made the following comments on the issue during his inaugural address at congress.

"There has been an improvement in the number of games available to club players, but all too often many games are crammed into a short period. This is often down to a county team manager dictating to elected officials when games can be played.

"This is completely unacceptable. County players of all grades are now almost strangers in their club grounds. This is equally unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue. Counties must ensure that clubs have access to all their players for a minimum of one night per week, except during a week when the player is involved in a championship game (and championship games only) with his county."

In the report to be debated next month, it is pointed out that five years ago in the course of a previous report stern action was recommended to deal with counties that continued to flout association policy in this area: "Counties that 'abandon' their club championships during the duration of the intercounty championships are effectively seeking to gain an advantage over opposing counties that adhere to the Central Council policy that proper status be given to the club championships and that an adequate and streamlined competition schedule be provided.

"This should not be allowed, and severe penalties for breach of policy should be applied if necessary."

Shadowing every proposal to free up time for club fixtures is the apprehension the extra space in the calendar will just be squandered by inadequate administration and overbearing managers.

To guard against that the recommendations of the recent report need to be followed closely in relation to the vetting of club fixture schedules. Page 16 of the report outlines a number of measures from the requirement to submit such schedules to provincial councils to the provision of seminars on drawing up fixture lists to - ultimately - powers of disqualification should bad habits endure.

There may be a long road ahead to sort out this problem but at least the first steps are being taken.