Rory O'Connor

But if it's going to be, like, that's a tourism thing.

point of view so take the money out of the tourism budget I know that it's part of the same portfolio but like I don't think we should be spending money for sport on giving it to major huge sporting bodies that are going to profit in millions and millions just so we can turn around and say aren't we great like we're bringing major sporting events to Ireland and basically saying to the vast majority of the Irish public that they can't go and see them I'm not certain that's something to be celebrated quite as much as we do

The reason I wanted to see the economic impact report on the NFL thing is, like, other than Dublin hoteliers and publicans that are suddenly charging 8.50 a pint, where does all that money actually, like, what does it come in the form of?

I think there is some value as well, but part of the reason is that I'm quite sceptical about the itemised thing when they sell, you're selling Ireland to the world.

Oh, it's true.

So that's kind of the bullshit that I find it hard to swallow.

Well, it's funny because I like I know a lot of Dublin GAA and football followers and like I've never had so much communication with them for several years because there's this weird frisson around Dublin football now at the moment.

Everybody's quite engaged or exercise, whatever way you want to look at it.

And for so long there was kind of like, you know, nobody said anything till you get to the semi-final and somebody would, you know, what are Kerry like?

And it was like, there was only one question was, are Dublin going to win the All-Ireland this year or not?

Can they be beaten or not?

And it becomes very boring, you know, like, and actually there was quite a while during that run where for a lot of Dublin football people, it wasn't even...

pleasure that they were getting out of the way it was just relief that they weren't beaten whereas now it's gone to something else completely like it's almost too it's almost sort of too far the other way to fully feel real you know it doesn't feel like the lowest days of say when Dublin were beaten in 2004 when that felt like symptomatic of where Dublin football was this is kind of like well

A couple of years ago, we were up there and now this doesn't look great.

And everybody's trying to figure out what the natural level is going to be, where Dublin will eventually kind of settle on that spectrum.

Well, they're playing a part-league next Saturday.

Who are they playing in the semi?

Lout.

I think the winner of that semi-final will win Leinster.

I think both of those... If Dublin got another win, I think they'd be better than Westmead or Kildare.