Croke Park stadium director Peter McKenna is in favour of the maintaining the tradition of winning All-Ireland teams receiving the trophy in the Hogan Stand.

The Association had planned to make pitchside presentations of the Liam MacCarthy and Sam Maguire Cups in 2009 as part of their plans to curb pitch invasions, but that now seems to be off the agenda for the foreseeable future.

"The reaction we got was that the players want the Hogan walk-up and it worked well," said McKenna.

"Lets keep a lot of the tradition and avoid the tradition which has health and safety consequences."

In a break with tradition, however, the GAA is considering presenting runners-up medals immediately after All-Ireland finals, as in other sports such as soccer, rugby and Australian Rules.

"There are still things we can do better. We tried to improve the hurling (final) and the football (final)," GAA director-general Paraic Duffy said.

"I was watching the AFL final last Saturday morning - nobody goes onto the pitch in Australia, so it is similar in that respect. But they did other things differently so there are things we could look at.

"You would like to look at ways to give some sort of recognition to the defeated team. Should the defeated team get their medals or whatever? It could be done. In the AFL, I noticed the players just got their medals and put them around their neck, which was fine.

"So that's something you could do." Tweet

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