The GAA's director of games Pat Daly believes that the six-team Division 1A has led to a rise in the standard of hurling.

The decision to reduce the number of teams in the top flight to six and introduce a five-round league met with a lot of resistence when it was first mooted but Daly says it has helped bring the ancient game to a new level.

"The last few years have been unprecedented and unparalleled in hurling, you've had three drawn All-Ireland hurling finals and you hadn't one before that since 1969," he states in The Irish Examiner. "I'm not attributing that totally to changes in the league but it has to be a contributing factor.

"In addition, the quality of the games has been at an all-time high. When you have people like Eddie Gray, Brian Talbot, Peter Lorimer, Paul Reaney rejoicing about hurling because they see it on Sky, these are professional soccer players who played at the highest level and they can see the nature of the game and the skill level involved."

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