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Go Professional with 8 franchises and start paying the best exponents of the game. Leave whatever is left behind to play a truly amateur competition

So the free car is a myth? The advertising and sponsorship is a myth? Come on. If Lee Chin can go semi pro in Wexford, I'd imagine the Dublin lads are well able to do so

As I said, it's not a criticism, but football is the main thing in their life. The jobs they do facilitate that and good luck to them. They are semi professional and in some cases fully professional. That's a massive advantage

"work". come on lads. I think it's well enough known that they have soft enough jobs. Certainly in a much better position than lads elsewhere. It's not a criticism by the way, but along with the free Subaru and other enticements, they're in a good place

Jesus lad leave it well alone, no matter what sort of rule change you make it will be analysed and dissected by the managers and tacticians and something will be put in place to gain an advantage..

Football is an evolving game, unlike hurling which in its truest form is 15 on 15 going at it once they cross the line... not too many teams that use the sweeper systems or 3 in midfield or any other tactic come away with the top prize
A team comes through every so often and Dublin is that team at the minute, the hat has to just come off and celebrate a decent side that is able to adopt and bring in young players to a system of play and keep it ticking over..
Counties should be looking at themselves and get their own house in order and improve their own before looking at changes which 'might' help them against Dublin

So every county should go semi professional?

Inter County football as a concept is flawed. People won't commit to a race they can't win. The All Ireland Championship is great for those who take turns to win it, but for everyone else it has lost its appeal. Larger counties have far too many advantages and it takes a golden crop every 20 or 30 years for anyone else to get a sniff. In some cases that never happens at all. If it's not competitive, there's a reason for that, but the GAA don't want to own what is blatantly obvious. It's far better to sit idly by and pray the first few months of the Championship fade to memory so we can get to the proper stuff, the Super 8's.

36 years since a small County won or reached an AI Final.
That was the remarkable County of Offaly who in a 26 year period won 3 football and 4 Hurling AIs .
6 football Counties have never reached an AI Final.
Of the small Counties who did reach Finals it's 38 years for Ros, 66 for Cavan, 82 I think for Laois and was it 88 Monaghan.

So what do we do if we accept the County model is flawed?
And it obviously is due to population differences which are going to be exacerbated in the next 20 years.
You'll have 1.5m in Dublin while Kildare,  Meath, Wicklow at least 800k.
Meanwhile 11 small BMW Counties  will have about 650k.
Will anyone want to move away from the County model as it's fairly ingrained at this stage?
However shorter term we need to fix our "product" to at least make the game attractive to neutrals again.

For the reasons you outlined, and many more, most notably semi professionalism, it is easy to see why competitiveness is suffering. I am of the opinion that some matches have no business being played, such is the chasm between the teams. They are not even of novelty value. Bookmakers give more of a chance to a League 2 side beating Manchester City than Carlow/Offaly/Laois/Longofrd/Wicklow etc beating Dublin. A pointless exercise slavishly following county boundaries which probably only have land mass in common. It won't change because it can't, not unless there is a professional intervention and some other model is adopted. Let's be honest here, Dublin are a professional outfit in all but name. And good luck to them. They are taking the opportunity to make themselves better in a time and place that lends itself to that. They are giving themselves every opportunity to be competitive year after year without having to wait for a golden crop. Success by numbers. How do small counties even begin to compete with that?

Portlaoise are miles ahead in my opinion and they need to show that. They were playing with Graigue the last day out and could have beaten them by what they wanted. They need to go foot to the floor for the whole game because Laois is no preparation for Leinster

Inter County football as a concept is flawed. People won't commit to a race they can't win. The All Ireland Championship is great for those who take turns to win it, but for everyone else it has lost its appeal. Larger counties have far too many advantages and it takes a golden crop every 20 or 30 years for anyone else to get a sniff. In some cases that never happens at all. If it's not competitive, there's a reason for that, but the GAA don't want to own what is blatantly obvious. It's far better to sit idly by and pray the first few months of the Championship fade to memory so we can get to the proper stuff, the Super 8's.

Good luck to Dublin. They can only keep doing what they're doing, and it's working for them. But it's like comparing Man City with Fleetwood Town. All they have in common is the same number of players on the pitch and that's not enough

It's not about "stopping" what's going on. It should be about improving the situation for everyone. The best players in each county deserve the chance to play at the highest level. At the very least, Provincial Champions should have to play the rest of the Province to progress further. If we continue to ignore smaller counties, the game will die from the bottom up. There has to be a realistic pathway for every kid to play at the highest level. Otherwise it's not worth the bother

Dublin had lean periods too, so good luck to them. It's not their fault that things have broken down so badly. My biggest gripe with the GAA is the prescriptive nature of the sport. If you're from any one of the smaller counties, you can literally never play at the highest level, simply because of where you come from. That's bordering on anti competitive

Graigue were poor. There was no real pattern to their play. They got bottled up a lot and movement wasn't happening. On the other hand, Portlaoise were supporting and moving for each other all the time. Healy and Saunders make a big difference and with Flanagan back it would allow Lillis to go back to midfield. There's a more balanced look about them this year but they need to be more ruthless

Is Callally involved with Rosenalis this year does anyone know? I thought he had the makings of a very good footballer

I don't subscribe to the "not much coming through" argument. I think there's plenty of good footballers out there. In my opinion, John Sugrue is a mile clear of any other coach in Laois. In my opinion, he is capable of getting the best out of individuals and teams, and I honesty don't believe anyone else in Laois can; be it club or county. Unfortunately, there is only one John Sugrue and not every player will get the benefit of his guidance. If I was an up and coming coach in Laois, I would seriously consider going outside the county to try and gain some proper experience. There is nothing to be learned doing things the way we have done them this last however many years. Our preparation is miles off. Our coaching is miles off. And consequently, our teams have been miles off too. There have always been good footballers in Laois and there will continue to be. It's what we do with them that matters.

Probably because it's offensive and irrelevant. What purpose would it serve to know what his personal worth was? Should we also ask how much his treatment cost too so we know exactly how much there was left? Cop on. Don't go if you have a moral objection. Simple as