Emmet Moloney writes for the 'The Irish Farmers Journal' and is a former sports columnist with 'The Kerryman'.

Once more the championship is upon us and once more it arrives with a whisper. Emmet Moloney wants things changed...

A couple of minor hurling matches and the first Ulster football clash with Antrim travelling to Ballybofey to take on Donegal – that’s our opening championship weekend. It’s not exactly the stuff of legend. Apologies to the hurlers of Antrim and Laois, the other hurling minnows in Ulster and the big ball enthusiasts in Donegal and Antrim, but this is hardly starting the championship off with a bang, is it?

The following weekend we have plenty of teams out for their first championship encounter. For the footballers of Kerry and Cork, it is strolls in the park to begin with against Tipperary and Clare. Perhaps the clash of Kildare and Wicklow will capture some bit of the imagination with Kieran McGeeney against Micko, but only if the Garden County make a game out of it. Otherwise it will be humdrum.

In two Sundays’ time we do have Cork and Tipperary to properly whet appetites when they meet in the first round of the Munster hurling championship. But remember what happened after last year’s first round shocker? That’s right, Tipp regrouped and won the All-Ireland, while Cork never again hit the highs of Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

What’s my point? Well, it’s simple really. Why can’t we start the championships with a bumper Sunday of matches? The national hurling and football leagues manage it, with four or five mouth-watering matches and a bit of razzmatazz to get us going.

The flaw in our championship make-up prevents most of this. The slow and steady start demanded by our provincial councils and provincial draws means the big guns are ushered out slowly, while the safety of the qualifiers means that no big team are out of contention until July at the earliest.

This we probably have to live with, but I see no reason why the championship can’t be condensed into three short and frantic months of action. This sleepy start to Sam Maguire and Liam McCarthy campaigns does not do the GAA any favours. Right now the potential of a Munster-Leinster clash in the Magners League final in a packed Thomond Park on the Saturday before Tipp and Cork will eat up all the coverage that week. Leinster’s Heineken Cup final the week before will also consume airwaves and plenty of minds for that epic on Saturday week. Meanwhile the 2011 championship start will have crept up on us.

That’s the month of May for you. Many moons ago, the hurlers of Tipp, Cork or Kilkenny could be finished for the year in May. I well remember Babs Keating’s last game in charge of Tipp (the first time) back in 1994, ending on the last Sunday in May when Clare shocked the then Munster champions. When the open draw was introduced in Munster, the twin towers of Cork and Kerry were under threat straight away when they drew each other in a quarter final. Up in Ulster, the All-Ireland champions in the early ’90s were perennially caught on the hop in the early rounds. Neither Down (’91), Donegal (’92), Derry (’93) nor Down (’94) again could even manage to get out of the province the following year.

That’s when the provincial championships meant something. Now we have a competition called the All-Ireland series and in truth until those last-eight and last-12 matches in football, there is nothing much going on short of shadow-boxing. In hurling, the second chance is having the same effect, weeding out the weak and giving the strong another bite of the cherry.

The only concrete change to this year’s championships will be a slight reduction in the number of live games every weekend, designed to get us out more to actually attend the matches. Sounds good in theory, but going from four live games down to three each weekend will hardly make that much of a difference. In reality this means only the one game on a Saturday evening, with the same two offerings on a Sunday once the championship is really up and running.

Double headers, the perfect recessionary antidote, look thin on the ground until the qualifiers force them upon us in Croke Park. Until then there aren’t any that stand out. Once upon a time the Leinster hurling semi-finals were obvious double bills, but the onset of Dublin and Galway sees them split as well. This year’s schedule is set in stone until the qualifiers start throwing up some (hopefully) tasty pairings, perhaps the GAA could then look at the prospect of four teams in one venue and value for the spectator.
It’s been said every year for the past three that attendances are on the slide because of the times we live in. The attendance at last year’s Munster hurling final replay was a paltry 22,000 and that says everything about the importance of the match in the greater scheme of things. A Saturday night throw-in for the replayed final of the sacred showpiece?

The attendance figures provide plenty of statistics which can be massaged to give the desired result. Of course more people attend the matches, that’s because we have more matches with the qualifiers! It’s the marquee matches that ring alarm bells. Sellouts are few and far between nowadays until the All-Ireland finals themselves. Even the Dubs no longer sell out Croker.

This is where the GAA needs to get imaginative but it seems that marketing matches à la Munster and Leinster rugby is akin to playing soccer in Croke Park. Oh, hang on; we’ve done that. So what’s the hold-up? What’s the big deal? Let’s hype it up a little, we have a product that will live up to it for crying out loud.

These are the same thoughts on the eve of every All-Ireland championship. But it’s always good to get them off the chest anyway.

At half three this Saturday afternoon the hurlers of Down and Donegal, Tyrone and Derry and Fermanagh and Armagh get the hurling championship underway in a blaze of obscurity. Good luck to all of them.

Later on in the year we can properly set the scenes but for now the early money is on Waterford to win the hurling in a wide open championship – and Kerry to win the football in a typical championship!.To catch Emmet's latest column, get 'The Irish Farmers' Journal' every Thursday...