Amalgamating counties at senior All-Ireland level may be the only way to make Gaelic football competitive at the highest level.
That's according to Dublin City University professor and senior football manager Niall Moyna, who joined us on Off The Ball tonight to talk about the issue of player burnout and revitalising the inter-county game.
"How often do you see a player retiring early from Kerry, Donegal, Dublin or Kilkenny? Very rarely. Why is that?" he said, highlighting the commitment issue for players from less successful counties.
"I think that's the problem. The NFL have changed that around so much in the last 20 years. There's no dynasties anymore in America football. Any team in any given year can come out and win [the Superbowl]. Why would 26, 27, 28-year-old who's starting a family want to go out four or five times a week and train, knowing that at the beginning of the year that they haven't a snowball's chance of even winning a provincial championship game?
"What I think has to happen is we have to combine counties. I know it's a sacrilege to say that but that's what's going to make it competitive. If we don't do that, all we're going to do is alienate and disenfranchise county players realise they're not going to have any success."
He added that he would like to see the inter-county scene narrowed down to 18 teams with the likes of Donegal and Sligo, and Armagh and Monaghan amalgamated, and more successful sides like Dublin and Kerry remaining single entities.
Moyna, who spoke to us last year about the health consequences of the lack of recovery time for young players, said the blame should not be placed squarely on the shoulders of managers.
"For me the biggest problem is that you have competitions running concurrently, you cannot blame the managers of those teams."
He also believes inter-county teams are over-training.
"I don't know why we use the term strength and conditioning. It's as though strength is more important than anything else. In the last decade, there's been this tremendous move for these big players. There's no need," he said, adding that amateur players are not getting the rest they need for the body to recover properly.
"I said this five years ago. We could reduce our training by 50-60 per cent."
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