First some news from the northside frontier. St Vincent's are out of the Dublin senior football championship. The team bowed out in novel circumstances on Saturday night.

In fact, it's been so long since a senior football championship came into the area that the team's annual exit is always somehow novel as it prolongs a famine which seemed unthinkable when the club won six minor titles on the trot in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Not since 1984 have Vincent's won a senior championship. And other people wonder what happened to all the good minors!

This year held out a `no guarantees' promise that it might be different. After all, in the first 50 years of it's existence Vincent's had won two out of every three senior football championships in the county.

The team hacked through a dire quarter-final with Ballyboden and set up an unpromising semi-final with some local rivals. The first game was drawn and in Saturday's replay with Erin's Isle, our local heroes ran up 2-4 to no reply in the first 11 minutes or so.

This preamble to what should have been a massacre caused no mirthful slapping of thighs in the St Vincent's camp. On the pitch, though, the lads seemed to be enjoying themselves. After all, if they could just manage 2-4 every 11 minutes through to the end of the game, their chances looked good. (Say what you like abut the Vincent's defence, they seldom concede more than 11-22 in a game)

Anyway, all you need to know about the skirmish is that Vincent's scored one point (from a free) in the final 49 minutes of the game. Erin's Isle scored 12 points. Great was the weeping and wailing and gnashing of small animals around Marino way. Losing is losing. Not. Losing to Erin's Isle or Parnell's is maximum grief. You could see it in Finglas and Marino faces on Saturday. Vincent's reduced to the status of being just another club. No aura.

The two-fold point of this little parable should be obvious to everyone now. There is no God. The open draw in the All-Ireland championships will never work. The open draw is bound to be dragged kicking and screaming into the arena of public debate in the next few days as people look back on the hurling championship just past.

There appears to be a body of thought suggesting that, rather than being an experiment, the current hurling format might presage the onset of a full-blown open draw.

The open draw would be a disaster for the GAA. All politics may not actually be local. All gaelic games are. When St Vincent's and Erin's Isle play, the match comes wrapped in the context of history, watching is then the equivalent of pressing your ear to the wall when the neighbours are throwing the crockery at each other.

Let us assume that the field for the open draw would include the entire province of Munster, five teams from Leinster, three at a stretch from Ulster, plus Galway and the All-Ireland B champions. Sixteen teams, four games each. Nice symmetry. Superficially most attractive.

This, it is alleged, would be splendid for unfortunate poor souls like the Dublin hurlers, who might get drawn against Derry in the first round and the B champions in the second round and thus proceed to an All-Ireland semi-final having pulled the wool over the eyes of the hurling world. They could masquerade as one of the four best sides in the country and this would be good for Dublin hurling.

Not nearly as good as winning a Leinster championship is going to be. An All-Ireland semi-final appearance via the open draw would be a good season. An All-Ireland semi-final appearance via a Leinster title would be history. In the rush to get hold of the new broom, it is often forgotten that the GAA has no marketing tool quite as effective as the provincial championships.

This is a golden age for the GAA and over the past few years, we have witnesses some of the most stirring scenes on the big days in the provinces. Clare in 1995. Wexford 12 months later. Dublin next year.

What is good for hurling is not tilting the competition to give Dublin or Laois the illusion that they are a better team should they benefit from an easy draw. What is good for hurling is when Dublin and Laois do the groundwork in the schools and clubs and public parks and prepare to get some reward when the senior side makes a breakthrough. This is the current work in progress.

Fans aren't fooled by league runs or seduced by easy draws. Under the open draw, the benchmark of being good enough isn't any different than it is under the provincial system. You can't win silver without beating a good hurling team. The provincial championships are good for hurling and football.

In an era when other sports are piped into our TV sets for 24 hours a day, the marketing benefits of local squabbles aren't lightly to be dismissed.

This column has reservations about the backdoor system which produced one of yesterday's finalists, but the benefit to hurling is obvious. Some modifications are required and the best suggestion we have heard came from Conor O'Donovan, the former Tipperary All-Ireland medallist, who has suggested that, in fairness to Ulster, their beaten finalist should be allowed back into the championship also.

They, along with Galway, the All-Ireland B champs, the winners and losers of Munster and Leinster would proceed to a draw for the All Ireland competition, each playing a quarter-final and so on. The draw might be seeded at the quarter-final stage and open thereafter to avoid instant repeats of provincial finals.

This is the logical extension of the argument that the new system is a judicial separation of the provincial and All-Ireland championships and it is also a clear response to the Ulster situation. Regardless of the magnitude of recent defeats, Ulster has been unfairly treated. Conor O'Donovan's suggestion also eliminates, for the time being, the contrived farce that is the Connacht championship.

The draw under Conor O'Donovan's proposal gives rise to a number of possible permutations and could become an event in itself. The current system is running into trouble. Next year the finalists in Leinster will know in advance that they will have the Ulster champions to contend with if they lose. Just now, that looks like easy pickings. Better to draw annually, keeping finalists from the same province apart at the quarterfinal stage or, perhaps, rewarding provincial winners with choice of venue.

Do all this and condense the hurling league a little more while the sun is still shining. The guess is that the greatest game would continue to thrive.

Meanwhile, if Conor O'Donovan has any suggestions about how to hold on to a 10-point lead in a county football semi-final, he might forward them to this column.