Time to react to falling GAA attendances

DWINDLING crowds could achieve what years of anguished argument have not. Reform of the football Championship may be drawing nearer, if comments from figures in Croke Park are indicative of changing opinions.

Falling attendances are illustrative of growing public boredom with the early-season structure. This is most marked, unsurprisingly, in Leinster where Dublin are now untouchable and would hammer the best of the rest of the province combined.

Ulster is the only provider of consistent, high-quality football. It has long been maintained that Dublin, Mayo and Kerry are being poorly served by the traditional system, but the prospect of a consistent pattern of declining attendances, with a consequent dip in money taken at the turnstiles, appears to be sharpening the focus of administrators.

This is only right. The GAA is not making money for shareholders; revenues are not being invested in big tobacco or nuclear power. For all the criticism Croke Park receives, the great majority of money generated by the intercounty game is redistributed within the association and will help to fund player welfare initiatives. But it is simply madness that a competition that starts in early May spends three months backed up in an out-dated format before August finally brings the guarantee of excitement. There is another way, and if it takes shrinking crowds to concentrate minds on alternatives, then so be it. The GAA did not become the most powerful cultural force in Ireland by responding slowly to events. It may be about to react again.