GAA director-general Paraic Duffy says that the introduction of a second tier football championship could well be counter-productive.

Talking to the media in Croke Park on Tuesday Duffy used soccer and rugby templates to argue his point that not every team needs to able to win a competition to make it viable, and therefore we should be celebrating Fermanagh’s brave performance against Dublin on Sunday.

In his Irish Times column on Tuesday former Donegal manager Jim McGuinness questioned the culture of mediocrity in our games, the lack of ambition and funding for smaller counties which has resulted in a situation where in Sunday's All-Ireland quarter-final an eight point defeat for Fermanagh was seen by many as a major achievement. Such has been the margin of defeats recorded so far this summer.

“They were 10 points down with 15 minutes go to and you would think they were the team winning,” he wrote. “They were jumping up and down in the stands and the team was applauded off the field.

“And on the surface there was a moral victory there for Fermanagh people to celebrate. But it made me wonder about the level that most teams are aspiring to now. I stayed in the stadium after Dublin had left and I was looking down at the pitch and the Fermanagh boys came back out and they were hugging their family and friends and the scene was one of joy. And that spooked me because they had been well beaten in an All-Ireland quarter-final. And Fermanagh are a well-organised team with an All-Ireland winning manager on the sideline.

“So what does that say about the future?”

But Duffy says he does not believe in "the doomsday situation... I have great respect for Jim McGuinness and his articles in the Irish Times actually are very good reading.

“Do I agree with his point? No, because what he’s saying is you put in more and more resources. A county like Leitrim or Longford or Carlow or Monaghan will never have the resources to put into the game the same as a county with a bigger population.

“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.

"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.”

McGuinness has been a leading advocate of creating a two tier championship in which the league results have more standing on championship status, and while the provincial tournaments remain, the All-Ireland championship would be divided into two more evenly balanced tiers. With a league and championship incentive for promotion and to avoid relegation between the tiers.

“We’re open to suggestions. I presume we’ll come forward with some sort of tweaking or an alternative,” said Duffy.

“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.”