Sky Sports' GAA juggernaut chugged into action this evening, broadcasting live from Nowlan Park for the novel occasion of Dublin's being hauled down national primary roads for a Championship fixture. The preamble inevitably hit on the fact that Dublin are much stronger than everybody else in the country, and the fact that the Leinster Championship is no longer competitive. (Dublin's average winning margin in Leinster last year was 19.6 points).
Senan Connell unveiled an intriguing plan to make the whole country more competitive with his native county, setting forth the merits of a "capital transfer" system. Far from being the complex and boring economic plan that will ultimately heighten inequality and unemployment on a mass scale, it is, in fact, Connell's idea to adjust the competitive imbalance that has beset Gaelic Football. He believes that players living in Dublin with links to rural counties should be transferred to play with those counties; essentially working like the Granny Rule which was so effective for Ireland under Jack Charlton.
Connell did not have the time to fully flesh it out, and Jim McGuinness was strongly against it. Peter Canavan contributed a dodgy joke at the end. Watch below:
We're not sure that it's the solution to the game's ills. The debate continued for a while afterward, with Canavan eventually saying the magic words: 'Championship structure'. To death and taxes you can add Dublin winning Leinster and any debate in Gaelic football ending in the words 'Championship structure'.
Someday it'll change.
Someday.
