Bite the bullet and go professional. The best players in the country, irrespective of where their from, need to have access to the highest levels of the game. That will never happen with the county system. I don't know of any other sport where your address dictates what you can potentially achieve. There are some very good footballers in smaller counties who have to be wondering why they bother, and there's nothing they can do about it. We do our best hyping up what we have, but in some cases it's like asking Fleetwood to compete with a Manchester United and then some critics saying well they need to up their game. It's all got very boring
Anytime this idea is brought up, I point people towards two competitions: the now deceased Railway Cup and the Sigerson Cup.
Technically the Railway Cup is the highest possible level of Gaelic Football. And it could even tap into provincial loyalties as they have in rugby. Yet although the absolute cream of crop played in it throughout the noughties, crowds decreased to sizes smaller than the number of competitors.
Meanwhile, the Sigerson Cup, is clearly the second highest form of football in Ireland. It enjoys significant investment, high-profile coaches, outstanding training facilities. And it should be able to tap into extensive loyalty in the form of former players and general alumni. The end result? Crowds on average smaller than an intermediate club league match.
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What am I getting at here?
GAA fans go to watch their club and their county. They rarely go to watch any given individual, and even when a Harlem Globetrotters style team is pulled together a la Ulster in the early noughties, nobody gives one flying f**k.
The only potential avenue for professionalism in the GAA would be to bin the county system as 32 teams wouldn’t be sustainable, and as such, transfers would be required.... at which point the county system would be naturally destroyed.
At which point the question would really need to be ask about where these pro teams would actually play.
I would confidently predict that Professionalism in the GAA would have the same shelf life as the Tommy Murphy Cup.
