The Super 8 qualifiers in football and the round robin format in hurling are set to be axed under any revised GAA Championship structure.
Director of Communications Alan Milton spoke to Off the Ball's John Duggan on Newstalk Breakfast and with the GAA admitting they cannot host inter-county activity until July at the earliest because of the pandemic, a rescheduled season for 2020 is on the cards.
"I think the first thing that will fall under threat will be the group stages of the qualifiers in football and the group stages in the provincial championships in hurling in Leinster and Munster. There just won't be sufficient weekends," said Milton.
"People have asked us about straight knockout scenarios again. You might consider going back to the old backdoor system in both football and hurling first. Again, until we have a clear time frame whereby we know how many weekends we have available to us; how many weekends we have to give our players to get back to some sort of training or conditioning, it really is back to the 'how long is a piece of string' analogy."
Milton says the GAA Club Championships will be the first to resume if Government guidelines are relaxed.
"One of the biggest considerations will be where the club fits into all of this. I think it will happen on a phased basis and a return to play will probably happen with smaller crowds and I think that's an ample opportunity to give a window for clubs to take centre stage. Obviously they will have to follow the same protocols to begin with.
"I think the likely thing you are going to see will be a return to action with the clubs and then a truncated Championship of some sort, but that will be dependent on scheduling and when the final destination of the Championships will be staged - namely the All-Ireland finals - and you work back from that date."
Download the brand new OffTheBall App in the Play Store & App Store right now! We've got you covered!
Subscribe to OffTheBall's YouTube channel for more videos, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest sporting news and content.
