Should we give up football?

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 The O'Shea wrote:

 nice triangles wrote:

 greenshoots wrote:

Of the list of countries you provided, Ireland has a lower population than them all expect for New Zealand (we are ranked 120th, and New Zealand are 121st for population) and Croatia who are 128th. So your logic makes no sense.

And why bring a bog ball reference into this? GAA is a huge part of Irish sport and culture. The lads playing Inter county football and hurling are serious, almost professional, athletes.

Young lads and girls playing  gaelic fotball, hurling, camogie etc. At times to the detriment of other sports such as soccer. It's a fact of life in this country. For those of us in hurling and football dominated counties, it's a fact of life!

No they are not, in most cases they are miles off it - its one of the weirdest 'sacred cows' of modern Ireland, we must all agree that inter county GAA players are nearly as fit and strong as professional athletes, and they are the most committed athletes in the country. This is not true. Anyone who believes this has never been involved in professional sport.
They all have jobs outside of their commitment to they club / county - they do not have the time to get anywhere near the level of professional athletes - its not possible.
One inter county football manager, of a relatively decent county, was on tv two weeks ago complaining that his panel may have to play 5 weekends in a row - and train 3 times a week. This is the level they are at, this is basic amateur level commitment, nothing over the top - yet this guy thought it was "too much". Sorry, rant over.

They train more often than some professional LOI teams - there's nothing about it that's sacred, it's an observable fact. Simply being paid to do something doesn't mean you're going to be automatically better at it. Roscommon, for example, were training 5+ times a week from November to March this year. Dublin famously trained about 40 days in a row under Ger Gilroy back when he was manager, and that has since become something that's not entirely unusual. There are certain strength and fitness metrics GAA players would blow football players out of the water, and vice versa. That's the nature of high level sports, each is going to have it's areas of focus.

Simply being paid to do something doesn't mean you're going to be automatically better at it. -  Its not about being paid to do it, its your job, its all you need to worry about when you get up in the morning, you are paid to train and rest properly, and all of your coaches are also professional.
 Roscommon, for example, were training 5+ times a week from November to March this year. Anyone involved in any kind of serious rowing squad or athletics training group would be doing this year in, year out, this is not ground breaking - this is decent level amateur commitment.
Dublin famously trained about 40 days in a row under Ger Gilroy back when he was manager, and that has since become something that's not entirely unusual. This is a classic amateur approach to training, like cramming for an exam. It all depends what they were doing in training but any decent measurement and feedback part of that programme would have reported diminishing returns to any fitness or strength metrics from day 15 to around day 20. Just because training 5 days in a row is good, training 40 days in a row is not 8 times as good. 
There are certain strength and fitness metrics GAA players would blow football players out of the water.  If you mean professional football players, there is no dataset that exists to back that up.