A map of the country dotted only with GAA pitches is viewable on the internet. All very interesting but our eyes were inevitably drawn to the large Lough Neagh shaped hole just south of Dublin.

The county responsible for this unsightly GAA black hole is, unsurprisingly, Wicklow.

There are vast tranches of Galway, Mayo, Kerry and Donegal that are free of Gaelic football pitches but these are invariably remote coastal areas.

What's striking about the Wicklow hole is that it is an inland phenomenon.

Wicklow folk in this office (25% of whom follow Gaelic football) have sought to argue that this gap is the fault of the Wicklow mountains but we find this to be a quite pathetic excuse. The mountains do traverse some of this area but not all of it.

Wicklow is the only county in Leinster without a provincial title. Make of that what you will.