Presently, Ulster hold the record for the most football Railway Cup wins with 30, while Munster has won the most hurling titles with 43.

Some blame the GAA for this decline due to the low level of promotion given and the lack of a fixed date to be played each year.

[2] The finals, held on Saint Patrick's Day, attracted huge crowds in the 1950s and 1960s, however, by the 1990s attendances at the once prestigious competition had reduced to only a few hundred.

The GAA Interprovincial Hurling Championship (known for sponsorship reasons as the M Donnelly Interpro and formerly referred to as the Railway Cup) was an annual inter-provincial hurling competition organised by the Gaelic Athletic Association and traditionally contested by the four historic provinces of Ireland, deciding the competition winners through a knockout format.

The final, traditionally held at Croke Park on St. Patrick's Day, was the culmination of a series of knock-out games, with the winning team receiving the Railway Cup.

After the success of the inter-county All-Ireland Championship, which had been held since 1887, the Gaelic Athletic Association launched an inter-provincial competition in 1905.

The holding of the final at Croke Park on St. Patrick's Day (17 March) set a precedent that linked the competition to that date for many years to follow.

[9] Fixtures in the early rounds of the Railway Cup were usually played at a neutral venue that was deemed halfway between the participating teams.

A decline in popularity, coupled with the All-Ireland Club Championship taking the St. Patrick's Day slot at Croke Park, led to the Railway Cup final being moved around the country for the following 25 years.

[10] The success of that overseas trip led GAA chiefs to look into the possibility of making the staging of the final in Europe a regular date in the calendar.

[12] In an effort to combat the declining popularity of the competition, some including Ulster manager Joe Kernan have suggested playing the finals as double-headers with the respective All-Ireland Club Football and All-Ireland Club Hurling Championship finals in the early part of the year in Croke Park and Semple Stadium respectively.

[12] The 2009 hurling semi-finals were held in February, and the final took place in March in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

[13] Abu Dhabi joined a list of foreign cities including Boston, Paris and Rome to have hosted finals.

[18] While the idea was looked upon positively by some elements of the Press as a way of injecting life back into this inter-provincial tournament,[17] other feared that the public would tire of this innovation as they had in the case of the Combined Universities v (Rest of) Ireland tests long before they lingered to an unlamented death[19] and doubted whether the Combined Universities would revive the Railway Cup.

[20] Pat McDonnell of UCC and Cork full-back, Texaco Hurler of the Year in 1969, had the honour of captaining the first Combined Universities team to compete in the Railway Cup against Ulster at Croke Park.