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It's time to end the insanity of two failing leagues – and create one All-Ireland football division.

That’s the opinion of Northern Ireland Football League board member and Glentoran Director Aubry Ralph, who says now is the perfect time to change the island’s footballing landscape.

Ralph claims there are no significant obstacles to the idea – at a time when clubs on both sides of the border are struggling financially and underachieving in European competition.

League of Ireland clubs failed to win a single tie in Europe this year, while Irish League side Linfield had the only success of the four northern sides, edging past Faroese opposition.

The Blues, and last year’s champions Cliftonville, pulled out of the cross-border Setanta Sports Cup competition earlier this week, but Ralph believes it’s time to look at an all-Ireland competition as a permanent solution to the game’s problems in both countries.

“I do think if we’re going to change things, now is a good time,” he said. “It was Einstein who said it was insanity if you’re doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

“It’s not working now, so you have to change it.”

Ralph was part of the discussion when the idea was last seriously mooted, in 2008, when a sports management company attempted to construct an all-Ireland league, with 10 hand-picked clubs and a €4 million prize fund.

The Irish FA torpedoed the idea before it took off, but Ralph believes a lot of things have changed in five years.

“At Glentoran we’ve cut our budget by two-thirds recently,” he said. “When the talks were going on some years back, the world was a different place and the financial model presented then appeared to be very attractive.

“But teams in the north, at that time, would have been playing catch-up, because it was mostly full-time down here. That’s changed now.”

There was strong opposition to the plan in 2008, due to the likely loss of half of the combined eight European slots.

But Ralph believes there will be a ­willingness to forego European places if the bigger picture was more attractive.