This afternoon sees the final round of round robin games under the present league structure.
That means Division 1B is no more.
Well, there may be a grouping called 'Division 1B' next year but the two top tier leagues are being mashed together so Division 1B as we have known it between the years 2012 and 2019 is no more.
It's been quite the nursery of champions has Division 1B.
Division 1A is by far the more glamorous competition. It gets top billing on League Sunday, for a start.
The problem with Division 1A was that it turned out to be too competitive. (And just when the competition organisers think they have provided for everything, don't they get hit with new complaints from fresh angles.)
Tipperary and Kilkenny did battle in a typical one-point battle last Sunday
At an unseasonably early time of year, teams were obliged to scrap and tear at each other to avoid falling out of the big time. Six of the best teams in the country tossed into a bear-pit, at the end of which fully one third of the entrants were obliged to fight it out in a do-or-die relegation battle.
The level of jeopardy involved here was deemed intolerable. Here was John Horan speaking at the time, "1A seemed to be very competitive and there was a feeling there it wasn't giving managers a chance to play players in a developmental manner, because results were key, particularly in 1A, and even in 1B because they were all trying to get out of it."
The big puzzle is why they bothered worrying about it. Placement in Division 1B has proven to be a punishment of questionable punitive force.
Division 1B is the teaching schoolgirls in Heidelberg of the hurling world
There was a scene in Blackadder Goes Forth - that'd be the First World War one - where Blackadder and his mentally defective sidekick Baldrick are caught behind enemy lines and the German guard, rather than call for the firing squad, sentences them to spend out the rest of the war teaching home economics to schoolgirls in Heidelberg, a punishment which the guard presumes to be 'a fate worse than death' for a man of honour.
Blackadder is naturally overjoyed but is obliged to conceal his delight so as to ensure the sentence is carried out.
Well - and I don't think this metaphor is a reach, though I'll admit some might - Division 1B is the teaching schoolgirls in Heidelberg of the hurling world.
In the two full seasons since their relegation from Division 1A, Galway have won a long-awaited All-Ireland title, a National League title, back-to-back Leinster championships and reached another All-Ireland final - which they lost to a team who'd also spent the spring in Division 1B.
After years of wrestling bears in 1A, finally falling through the relegation trapdoor in 2016 was the best thing they ever did.
Not long after the 2017 All-Ireland victory, a Galway supporting friend of mine spent an evening pondering how his team could plausibly retain their Division 1B status without making it look like they had taken a dive.
Galway's breakthrough All-Ireland was won after a spring spent in Division 1B
Thankfully for Galway - well, at least from this perspective - Limerick came along.
Their (supposedly debilitating) long-time residency of Division 1B was no impediment in the All-Ireland championship of 2018.
Yet another reminder that Division 1B is the place to be. That makes the last two All-Ireland winners and three of the past four National League winners.
In the seven years since its introduction, Kilkenny and Tipperary are the only top tier counties not to sample life in Division 1B. And didn't Brian Cody's pure-minded determination to win every game finally come unstuck in the 1B era…
What's the point of losing all your matches if the carrot of relegation is taken away?
Cork supporters were no doubt excited after their tepid displays in the opening two rounds of the league before remembering with regret that the whole system is being re-jigged and there's no place in the luxurious heaven that is Division 1B up for grabs.
What's the point of losing all your matches if the carrot of relegation is taken away? You might as well win a few games in that case.
The hurling league is in a bit of a funk this year though there's not too much wailing.
Hurling people are notoriously slow to push the crisis button. 'Keep Calm and Leave Hurling Alone' is the motto. This mentality is so ingrained that - though this all forgotten now - a majority of hurling counties opposed the current championship structure, apparently content to preside over a system which saw their own game swamped and marginalised by endless Super 8 football matches.
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It took 'football country', with all its standard fretfulness, to step in and rescue hurling country from itself, more than likely at the behest of Central Council. Thus, we got the 2018 All-Ireland hurling championship.
Still, the impulse to de-dramatise persists. By and large, when confronted with a low-intensity spectacle, hurling pundits prefer not to dwell on macro-concerns such as the growing redundancy of the national league, and instead hit on the old reliables - namely, that the referee is blowing for everything.
The fact that the All-Ireland championship is now a league of sorts, or at least as much a league as the league ever was, presents a bit of an existential crisis for the actual national hurling league.
The league's USP has never been regarded as a great SP and now it's not even U anymore. The favoured suggestion of the wags and the cynical newspaper columnists is to go ahead and convert the league into a knockout.
This obviously presents a problem for those who cherish the original meaning of words. (Would almost be as confusing as the English practice of using the term 'public school' to refer to what are, in any man's language, 'private schools'.)
Offaly may be excluded from the new Division 1 structure if current form continues
Whereas the National Football League appears to have finally found its groove after decades of tinkering, partly one suspects because they reset to the obvious structure of four tiers of eight and simply stuck with it, hurling keeps jinking around with the formula, attempting to create a competitive and entertaining tournament for supporters while not cutting struggling counties adrift.
You can't do four tiers of eight because there are nine indisputably strong hurling counties. There are also about four or five 'associate' hurling counties - as our cricketing friends might term them - and they'd also like a character-building (or morale-sapping) runout against the big dogs every now and again.
It is of course rank bad luck that Offaly, one of those struggling counties around whose needs any league system must be wrapped, may not even make Division 1 next year.
Going by previous debates, this would appear to place the whole re-structure attempt in jeopardy. Last year, it was suggested we forget the relegation thing when it became immediately apparent that Offaly were going be exiled from the Leinster hurling championship.
This panic arrived curiously late in the day given the relegation aspect of the new system had been well flagged – and it had to have crossed people's minds that Offaly might be likely candidates. But then the GAA community is well stocked with people who never presume they're going to have to pay for electricity until the bill actually lands in their hand.
In fixing the hurling championship, they may have robbed the league of whatever unique charm it held
The effort to re-arrange the championship structure at the eleventh and a half hour failed. We'll see how the league adapts to the four-time All-Ireland champions being shoved outside the main tent. If Offaly's fall continues at this rate, Division 1 might hold about 25 counties in a few years.
Either way, the most irrelevant league campaign of them all reaches the end of its league phase this weekend. The competition may recover some of its fangs for next year as relegation becomes at least a theoretical possibility for a wider range of teams.
With the football league sailing at an all-time high in terms of public interest, there's a sense that the hurling league needs a more imaginative makeover if it's not to become a dreary, poor man's version of the summer extravaganza.
In fixing the hurling championship, they may have robbed the league of whatever unique charm it held. Perhaps, in the grander scheme of things, it's an acceptable casualty.
Follow the final round of Allianz Hurling League matches via our live blog on RTÉ.ie/sport and the News now app, or listen to live national radio updates on RTÉ Radio 1's Sunday Sport
