Upon succeeding Aogán Farrell earlier this year, Horan said he was keen on looking into reintroducing something along the lines of the Tommy Murphy Cup and now there is movement on the matter.

“We discussed it the last day at Central Council. We put it to the floor for just a straw poll opinion. Every hand went up, everybody was of the view that it should happen. We have written to the counties and we have asked them to come back with what they feel should be the make-up of a tier two competition. We will take on board what they have to offer and we will present it.

“We are doing a bit of research as well into the performance of Division 3 and 4 teams in the qualifiers in the last few years and see have they benefited or have they gained anything out of it. Have they beaten Division 1 or 2 teams or are any qualifier wins they are getting solely coming from beating Division 3 or 4 teams.”

Horan envisages Division 3 or 4 teams who reach their respective provincial finals to be afforded a chance of reaching the Super 8s, but he is determined to ensure any second-tier competition is attractive in its billing and reward.

“I think if you are going to sell it, you are going to have to sell it in a manner that makes it attractive to players. If you’re a lad playing for Longford for 10 years, I think you are entitled to a day in Croke Park in September, rather than give it to a 15- or 16-year-old who may drift away from the game in a year or two and never really value that experience. So my hope would be that it (a tier two final) would be a curtain-raiser to the senior final in September.

“It would mean that those teams that go into tier two wouldn’t play in the qualifiers, that the qualifiers would be a smaller competition restricted to maybe teams — and this is my own personal speculation on this — teams that are in Division 1 or 2 or teams that get to a provincial final.

“So if Division 3 or 4 teams or teams who get to a provincial final, they will get the opportunity to play one more game and get to the Super 8s.

“And maybe we will run this and if we played it in front of the All-Ireland final, picked an All-Stars team from it and we allowed them to go on an All-Star tour, then I think whatever team is involved might get the right to be in the qualifiers for the following year if their status hasn’t risen out of the league.”

Plans are also afoot to change the make-up of the Allianz Hurling League for 2020 with the creation of two Division 1 groups of equal strength as was last the case back in 2008.

Horan explained: “It was felt the winners of the All-Ireland were coming out of 1B and 1A seemed to be extremely competitive and there was a feeling there that it wasn’t giving managers an opportunity to actually play players in a developmental manner because results were key, particularly in 1A, even in 1B because they were all trying to get out of it.”

Regarding Dublin’s funding, Horan pointed out the Sport Ireland money ring-fenced for games development is split between the sexes.

“It is GAA money going into those coaching programmes and it is the case in Dublin that every school is getting hit a coach from a club. And the girls are benefitting equally to the boys. So to say that all that money going into it is what’s creating Jim Gavin’s team is slightly an imbalanced argument.”