Listen, if you're from the country (well, it must be awful for you!) why not take the next five minutes or so off. There's no exam about this stuff and it'll only get your dander up. You know the routine: Dublin this. Dublin that. Dublin effin Dublin. So do your blood pressure a favour and put the paper down and go out and kiss your cousin or de-tag some sheep or whatever it is that gives you pleasure, and then we'll be finished with this stuff and you can come back in and do the crossword.

What's to be done about the state of the GAA in Dublin? I ask the question because, well, people have been asking me. Everywhere I go. They used to ask me if people hated me because I'm beautiful. Now it's the GAA in Dublin. This week I received a letter from an eminent Meath man expressing genuine concern. You know you're looking a little sickly when rivals ask if you're okay.

Well we're not okay. We used wonder why Dublin generally won a football All-Ireland every decade or so and nothing at all in hurling despite the population the city has. Well we win that much because of the population we have. Not despite. Out of the people in this city who genuinely care about the Games, that's what we can manage.

So when the GAA gets its £60 million, let us see some of it and two fingers to the begrudgers. If the games die here they'll die elsewhere. Sponsors and TV people don't want an ailing rural game. They want something vibrant. So let's do something about Dublin.

And Bertie. Drop the side-of-the-mouth talk about the GAA opening up all its grounds and realise there is a cultural treasure here. Needing protection. If baseball benefits from generous US anti-trust laws because of its cultural significance why not the GAA? We're not okay here in Dublin. I was surprised for instance to hear the other night that the juvenile hurling board had resigned months ago. It's bad enough that juveniles in the city are offered a hurling season that lasts two months, that they see the county board make daft decisions like dropping out of the round robin series in Leinster, that every senior hurler who can get onto the football panel clings to it like a drowning man to a dinghy. But no juvenile hurling board this year? And scarcely a murmur. There are people out there doing unbelievable work. You see them in parks everywhere, surrounded by kids with little hurls in their hands, and the kids are wearing Manchester United jerseys, wondering how long before they next play a game and you know these good people are rolling rocks up hills trying to keep the kids interested. It's not a specific failure. The games in Dublin are administered by John Costello, one of the smartest operators the association has. John needs a revolution though, because it's a general failure. Lots of things just changed. It will be painful, but why not cleave hurling away from football, get a genuine hurling board up and running? Any clubs with a genuine commitment to the game could get together in a hall and decide what is needed. A full-time organiser for underage level, someone who'll sort fixtures and make phone calls and run a competitive season from April through till September and stick the league tables, the championship draws the scores and scorers onto a well-designed website? Done.

Ditto for adult hurling. And it needs Lester Ryan to be given a fleet of coaches to go into primary schools and clubs and evangelise. It needs schools of excellence. And then it needs an overall tsar, a Kevin Heffernan or a Mick O'Grady to keep everything moving and to gather ideas and implement them.

We need a push on camogie and women's football too, not just because they are wonderful games but because they are an area where the GAA offers something unique: family involvement. I wrote about rugby schools a while ago and I've had a few letters since from places like Greystones and Ballyboden and Cork commenting on something which a lot of clubs seem to have noticed. Having young camogie teams and girls football teams around the place is an achievement in itself but the by-product seems to be that it brings in adults, who bring in their boys. It's a logistical phenomonon which seems to keep the young lads turning up. We need to stop running our games for the benefit of the senior intercounty players. If they are busy, league games should be going ahead. Lots of them. And we need to realise that teachers' involvement is a genuine bonus. We need campaigns advertising the games and then we need to send in those flocks of coaches. We need to begin asking why the games can't be taught as part of a recognised cultural curriculum. We need help from other counties. We need to merchandise GAA stuff, design it well and sell it so that it's not naff to wear a Dublin GAA sweatshirt but acceptable to wear a Washington Redskins anorak. And we need senior players to make a commitment to being media-friendly. Not because hacks get their jollies from talking to them but because kids like hearing from them.

And we need to look at the size of the city. I proposed a few weeks ago that the county divide itself into four as it has done administratively. And? Hoots of derision! Fingal win an All-Ireland? That's the point though. It is inconceivable that Fingal could win anything, yet it represents one of the most densely populated areas of the country, pushing on for half a million inhabitants.

Isn't it worth at least trying at administrative and underage levels just to bring the games on? A Fingal championship, a Fingal development squad, etc with the winners playing off for the city title. Who knows, maybe it could turn out to be a hurling region?

Well, that's off my chest for now. Tell those nice country folk to stop applying for their EU "Standing Outside Not Reading The Paper Emergency" grants and come back in.