Offaly star Niall McNamee has called for an overhaul of the Allianz Football League, something which he believes would bring about an “unbelievable improvement” for most counties.
McNamee believes that the current structure, with teams split into groups of eight across four distinct divisions, has allowed stronger counties to flourish while others have been stagnant at best.
He points to the model that was in place when he started playing with Offaly, where there were 16 teams each in Division One and Two, as a means to close the gaps that have widened from top to bottom over the past decade and more.
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He said: “I always go back to what it was like in the mid-2000s when the leagues were split in 1A/1B and 2A/2B and in my mind the quality and standard of inter-county football and the gaps that have been created are never going to be taken back unless that is addressed and unless that is changed back to the way it was before then.
“I just think a lot of those Division One teams have got a head start because of the competition that they were playing in, the competitive nature of their games was bringing out the best in each other, week in, week out.”
Speaking on the GPA’s Players’ Voice podcast, McNamee pointed out how counties that drop to Division Three and Four often suffer player drain as a result, which makes it far more difficult for them to climb the ladder.
“It's going to take three, four, five years of solid commitment, to get to a level where you can compete with a Division One team and by that stage they've probably accelerated on further again.
“So for me, I'd love to see that formula brought back in. I don't think there's a massive gap between a lot of the teams, from a skills point of view.
"I just think they're not being exposed to that type of environment often enough and when they do get exposed to it, it's generally in the Championship game, first round, and they get absolutely beaten out the gate and it just absolutely demoralises them, supporters, and everybody else and next thing you're over into the same thing over and over again.
"So I get the idea for the Tailteann Cup, it gives you competitive games during the summer but it's absolutely not going to fix the problem, in my opinion, of the massive gap that exists right now between the top four teams.”
He added: “When I started playing with Offaly in 2003, we had a very realistic chance of winning a Leinster Championship, of being very competitive and getting to an All-Ireland quarter-final, semi-final stage.
“Realistically that's where we thought we were at. But since those League changes, those prospects have gotten lower and lower and lower.
"So I think that would be the first thing I would change and I think within the space of about three years, I think you'd see an unbelievable improvement in those mid teams, those Division Three, lower Division Two, even top Division Four counties.”
McNamee, 36, has just launched a new range of football boots through his business, Twelves, and hasn’t yet decided if he will commit to playing inter-county football once again in 2023.
“Between work and the different aspects of the business at the moment, between the boots and opening a shop at the moment as well and then obviously we’ve the wedding, we’re trying to plan that and then club football, we’re trying to organise planning permission for the house.
“There’s just a lot on at the moment for me and I suppose if I start looking too far ahead to do stuff like that in terms of next year it just overwhelms me a little bit so I suppose at the moment I’m just taking things day by day in terms of just trying to get through the rest of this year.”
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