The 2010 All-Ireland winner agreed with Kerry legend and Nemo Rangers club man Tomás Ó Sé who said after the Rebels’ Championship exit that “Cork is not a football county in my eyes”.

Ó Sé said that “I don’t think there is the desire to drive the football as much as hurling, from not just the county board but from everybody”, a statement Goulding agrees with.

The Éire Óg club man was involved with Cork until the end of the 2016 Championship when he called time after 11 seasons.

Cork already appeared a county on the slide at that stage though back-to-back heavy defeats to Kerry and Tyrone this summer has left the football community disillusioned.

“I’d be inclined to agree with (Ó Sé) to be fair, it’s predominantly a hurling county, full stop,” said Goulding.

“I don’t think that’s going to change. I remember back when we were successful, if you take the All-Ireland finals and semi-finals and the trips to Killarney out of it, we didn’t have a huge support other than the core Cork football support.

“I remember playing Cavan in a qualifier at Páirc Uí Chaoimh the year we won the All-Ireland and there was a thousand people at it, the same playing Wexford in the next round. That’s just the way it is.

“So I’d agree with him in the sense that when Cork hurling was in a bad place a couple of years ago, there was a huge uproar over what needed to be done and I don’t see the same level of interest in sorting out the football.

“Pa Kelly is saying it a good bit, in fairness to him. Donncha (O’Connor) had a good article too but I don’t think there’s the same concern that there would be if this was Cork hurling and that’s worrying.

“There’s a realisation needed from everyone involved in Cork football that a drastic change is needed.”

Asked if he’s noticed a sense of urgency from the county board to address football’s issue, Goulding shook his head.

“No, I don’t think so, I’m not seeing it. It’s a collective responsibility, it’s very hard for the senior football team to be progressing if number one, the county board are just doing business as usual because it needs more than business as usual now and two, if your county championships aren’t set up in a way that facilitates getting the best out of players to bring them through the system.

"Look, from county board level to all the management teams involved at county level to the clubs, I think it needs an overhaul.”

As well as the sudden spike in form enjoyed by the Cork hurlers, Goulding noted optimistically that Donegal’s footballers won the 2011 All-Ireland two years after losing to Cork by 14 points.

But he conceded that the problems run deep, citing a lack of competition in the senior club championship to the constant rotation of players and coaching staff to the attitude of the players’ themselves.

“If you look at the culture that was there with the successful teams from Billy Morgan through to Conor Counihan’s time, you lost a lot of them very quickly around 2013, 2014,” said Goulding.

“The culture then kind of dropped a bit because you had a lot of new lads coming in and you didn’t have the Graham Cantys and the Alan Quirkes and these guys to learn from.

“I suppose there’s a bit of a gap there in the culture of how some players approach being an inter-county footballer now. In that regard, standards have to come up again.”

Goulding hit out at the constant change around the senior football panel in recent seasons. “In Cork, there’s just so much change, the strength and conditioning coaches are changing, they’re all good in their own right, but they are changing once a year, it’s very hard to get any consistency,” he said, noting how players have been swapped in and out of the team also.

“From the Kerry game to the Tyrone game, there’s five more changes. Although you’d say you have to make changes after that beating from Kerry, when you’re playing these Division 1 teams it’s hard to be flip-flopping, putting new lads into crunch games against teams that know exactly what they’re at.”

Goulding said it appears from boss Ronan McCarthy’s comments that he might wield the axe on his panel over winter. Donncha O’Connor and Colm O’Neill have already left the group , O’Neill confirming this week that injuries have forced him to retire.

Goulding described O’Neill as “an absolute baller and a finisher of the highest calibre” and said both forwards will be significant losses. “I’m not sure what he (McCarthy) will do, to be honest,” said Goulding.

“If you read into his articles it looks like he’s going to have a big think about his personnel. I know there’s kind of development squad players doing strength and conditioning already, underage players who haven’t been in the setup so he’s obviously started thinking about what he needs to do already.”

Daniel Goulding has teamed up with Electric Ireland as part of its GAA ‘This is Major’ campaign, to offer one lucky GAA team the chance to win an exclusive training session. See facebook.com/ElectricIreland to enter.