Ailing football needs an innovator on the inside

Just months after a riveting 2001 football championship had captured the public imagination with the advent and novelty of the backdoor, Ger Loughnane proclaimed in his book, Raising The Banner: “The biggest problem with hurling is that it is in danger of being swamped by football.

"The GAA is a contradiction in that it is made up of two games that are in competition with each other. People say it is soccer and rugby that are the competition, but I was involved with a dual club for a while and I know that it is football.”

All these years on and, while the kernel of Loughnane’s argument — that, participation-wise, huge swathes of the country remain a hurling wasteland to the indifference of much of GAA officialdom — remains valid, there’s a sense now that, spectator-wise, it’s now football that is being swamped by hurling.