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8th September 2018
11:25am BST

"I have to acknowledge the inordinate amount of time I spent dealing with financial and facility issues..." he continued.Time is money, and Kevin McStay had spent too much of his on matters outside of football. McStay had had enough and, with that, Roscommon football was catapulted straight back to square one.
Jim McGuinness famously used drive around his county to try attract sponsors for the Donegal senior football team. Kerry and Mayo have had banquets abroad to raise finance to help fund their teams.
Anybody who doesn't think money has an impact on the success of a county's senior football team needs their heads examined. Yes of course, money alone won't lead to success, but when it leads to greater expertise and is combined with dedication and a massive population, it certainly makes a difference.
There are so many costs involved in running an inter-county team, the most expensive of which are things like:
'The last five years have seen a rapid growth in the number of people living in the Greater Dublin Area,' it read.
'Recent research has indicated that fewer and fewer of these children are choosing Gaelic Games as their preferred activity. The situation is further compounded by the fact that the main competitors in the sporting arena are investing significantly in marketing their games aggressively, including areas and schools where previously the GAA was the dominant entity in sporting terms,' it continued.That's fair enough. It makes sense to at least try to have as much people as possible playing our national game and targeting the area with the biggest population was a logical move. So from the next year onwards, Dublin GAA was pumped with funding, year on year, from the central body itself. Underage structures improved, the number and education of coaches grew while participation numbers increased. The only problem was that the other counties were ignored while Dublin grew and grew. https://twitter.com/EwanMacKenna/status/1038095938127122432 Only in 2016 did the GAA begin to give anything to the other counties in Leinster, when the east Leinster project was introduced which, when compared to Dublin's lot, is small change. After a couple of years, the Dubs began to take over at underage level. Dublin won four minor titles between 2009 and 2014, they won four under-21 titles in the same period. During that time-frame, their seniors won Sam in 2011 and 2013 and the sponsorship deals came rolling in, those €1 million per year from AIG kind of sponsorship deals. It's 2018 now and Dublin still receives over a €1 million Games Development grant off the GAA every year and they've won four football All-Irelands in-a-row.
"It doesn't make sense that we should be considered 1/32 of the country, when we should be 1/5th," read that report.And it would make sense for Dublin to push for provincial status. Their aim of course, has to be to keep on getting as many youngsters and people involved in the GAA as possible. But you can't have it every way, and something has to give in that case. As the numbers increase, think of all the youngsters in Dublin who may be lost to the GAA because of the realisation that it'll be incredibly difficult for them to reach the greatest honour there is in the GAA - to represent Dublin at some level. Think of the widening gap with the other counties. And Colm Parkinson offered the solution to it all on Thursday's GAA Hour Show.
"If all of these Games Development officers continue on this good work, there are 90 in Dublin, 89 in the rest of Leinster," he said. "You add to this that Dublin's population is expected to grow in the next 20 years. You add all of this together, Dublin will have the population of a province, they'll get towards the playing percentage of a province, they'll have the commercial revenue of a province, they've the GAA funding of a province. "They field one team...If you're to follow this through, the only solution to this, if everything continues as it's going, is not for Dublin to be split into two, it's for Dublin to be split into at least four," he said.You can listen to the ferocious debate between Jarlath Burns and Colm Parkinson here. https://soundcloud.com/sportsjoe-gaa-hour/jarlath-burns-defends-dublin-funding-carnacon-mess
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