Former Galway manager Mattie Murphy, who in the past decade has delivered minor All-Irelands for the county by the truckload, has slammed the 2008 decision to move the county into the Leinster championship.
Galway have played in six Leinster championships since 2009. Their sole provincial title in that time came after their surreal, earth-shattering hammering of Kilkenny in 2012.
Now, Mattie Murphy has adjudged the experiment a failure and said it has only served to 'fatten their rivals coffers.'
Murphy is not suggesting a return to the old days where Galway played their first championship match in an All-Ireland semi-final in August. Instead, he wants the provincial system broken up and the oft-wished for 'Champions League style' to come into being.
He told the Irish Independent the decision to move to Leinster gave the GAA the easy way out.
Provincial coucils are too powerful and they are not going to be the turkeys voting for Christmas and until somebody comes around and says 'look there are 32 counties in this country and why not do the obvious four eights and I am sure there are 16 teams that would love to play in the senior championship and four fours, and you would have your Champions League style and everybody gets the same amount of chances.
Murphy had two spells as Galway senior manager in 1996, when Galway won the League but then were narrowly beaten by Wexford in the All-Ireland semi-final, and in 1999-2000, where he guided Galway to a quarter final win over Tipperary in '00 (Galway's first championship win over serious opposition in seven years).
The only thing Galway moving to Leinster had achieved, he said, was giving the Leinster counties 'extra finance to turn around and whip us.'
