GAA Director General Paraic Duffy disagrees with the 'doomsday' picture that is being painted for the future of the All-Ireland SFC.

The debate on the fairness of the football championship structure has revved up a notch in recent days following the lopsided nature of last weekend's games but, speaking to The Irish Independent, Monaghan native Duffy retorted: "The doomsday situation, I don't agree with it.

"We've had this debate this year about the structure of the Championship and doomsday - but we should be celebrating what Fermanagh did here last Sunday.

"To be even here and be able to reasonably compete with Dublin was a great performance on their part. Look at the number of clubs that they have.

"The same with Longford. We should be applauding the success of Longford with their minors getting to the (Leinster) minor final based on the population they have."

Duffy argued that gaelic football is no different to any other sports: "Let me tell you this: in a couple of months' time the Rugby World Cup takes place. Uruguay are in it and Canada and the US. I'm not an expert - there's three or four that I can think of.

"Have they any chance of winning the Rugby World Cup? Any chance? Will there be hammerings in it? Will there be one-sided games in it? Of course there will.

"But I don't see any clamour in the Irish papers, people saying 'keep these teams out of the Rugby World Cup, they shouldn't be in it'.

"The (English) Premiership starts next weekend - I'll tell you now the top four. I'm no expert in soccer but everyone knows who the top four will be. I don't hear any clamour about the teams that can't compete at the bottom, the Bournemouths and so on.

"We need to get a sense of perspective. We've lost a sense of perspective around this.

"Every team doesn't have to be in the competition just to win it. Because if that's the basis we'll end up with a competition with four and six teams in every competition."

He concluded "We're open to suggestions. I presume we'll come forward with some sort of tweaking or an alternative.

"But I'll tell you there's no guarantee that it'll be accepted because if you start excluding people all over the place, the bottom eight, the bottom 12, just watch the reaction you get from the players, never mind the counties."

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