Westmeath talisman John Heslin asked some seriously tough questions of the GAA as an organisation during his appearance on the RTÉ GAA Podcast.
The 24-year-old UCD man voiced his concerns regarding the future of Gaelic football in a number of counties should a two-tier system be put into place, and pondered aloud as to whether those involved in the sport are too short-sighted to oversee its progression.
Heslin also maintains that the GAA should be marketing its fixtures better, more akin to the Premier League or American sports - an idea born of the low attendance at Westmeath's National League Division 4 final at Croke Park in April.
Westmeath's star forward then turned his attention to the underage setup within his own county, and suggested the Westmeath county board may not be sufficiently equipped to properly develop the sport at its grassroots at a local level.
Speaking to RTÉ, Heslin said:
If you think about it, back in the day, how many teams were able to win the All-Ireland anyway, and how that hasn’t been developed?
Are we narrow-minded and short-sighted that we just let things happen in their own way? The way the GAA has gone, and the money around, how have we not put structures in place to develop competitiveness?
When you play a Division 4 League final and you have probably 300 people at it, where’s the GAA going with that?
How are we going to improve our games going forward? What is our ten or 20-year plan? If you go into a two-tier championship, are the other 16 teams going to fall away?
You have the ‘super 8′ coming in but are you going to be left with a fewer proportion of teams playing the game?
In Westmeath, what development has gone on? I’ve mentioned this before to GPA officials and other GAA officials and they say it’s up to the county board, but are the county boards in a position to look after the development of underage coming through? There’s an underlying issue that needs to be addressed, as well as the championship structures.
You can listen to John Heslin's full appearance on the RTÉ GAA Podcast below:
