The qualifiers can be traced to the introduction of the "back door system" which was first introduced in 1997, though in the early years, qualification was open only to the beaten provincial finalists in Leinster and Munster.
Similarly in Ulster there were many problems as hurling was much weaker and confined to a small few counties in the north-east of the province.
Their proposals involved allowing the defeated Munster and Leinster finalists to re-enter the All-Ireland championship.
At the start of 1996 these proposals looked unlikely of being introduced, however, a whistle-stop tour undertaken by the committee's secretary Frank Murphy and Pat Daly, the GAA's Games Development Officer, had changed the position.
The following year the All-Ireland final was an all Leinster affair, with Kilkenny facing Offaly in a repeat of the provincial decider.
In 2002 the back-door system was expanded to involve teams beaten in the early stages of the provincial series of games.
Round one involved Galway, who entered the championship at this stage, the Ulster runners-up and the defeated teams from the quarter-finals and semi-finals of the Leinster and Munster campaigns.
In the first season of the new format, Clare reached the All-Ireland final having been defeated by Tipperary in the Munster quarter-final.
Both Cork and Kilkenny had been beaten in their provincial campaigns, however, they used the qualifiers to good effect in reaching the All-Ireland decider.
The three remaining teams in Leinster and Munster joined Galway and the Ulster champions in the eight-county All-Ireland qualifier series.
This anomaly continued for the remainder of this system, with Galway and Cork also facing two defeats but remaining in the championship nonetheless.