It is entirely appropriate that the deal between the ‘The Three G’s’ – Government, GAA and GPA – was announced just as the panto season is gearing up at theatres and parish halls the length and breadth of the country, writes An Fear Rua …

The idea of Dessie Farrell and Nickey Brennan as the Ugly Sisters in ‘Cinderella’ may have a certain thespian plausibility. However, Séamus Brennan as Prince Charming – in luminous green tights - mincing and lisping his way around a stage? Ah, no thanks. We’d rather head for the nearest Emergency Exit.

Nevertheless, all three of them have got together to stage their own production of that perennial favourite ‘Humpty Dumpty’. Some of our readers may be familiar with Humpty from childhood memories. He was the big fat egg whom the little girl Alice encountered sitting on a high wall in Lewis Carroll’s deranged – but classic – work ‘Alice, Through the looking-glass’.

This was what Humpty had to say to Alice, among other things:
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'

So, there’s not much point in posing the question – as some journalists have been doing –is this deal the end of amateurism in the GAA? Because Nickey Brennan says amateurism lives on. And Nickey is an honourable man. So does Dessie Farrell. Like Shakespeare's Brutus, Dessie, too, is an honourable man. And so says Wee Seamie Brennan. All honourable men. Other people are saying the opposite. Not least a whole lot of grass roots members of Dis Great Assoooosheeeayshun Of Ours in Ulster, and others in places as disparate as Mayo and Offaly.

Like Humpty Dumpty, in this debate, ‘Amateur’ means what anyone chooses it to mean. Or, to quote from another great work of fiction - this time science fiction - as Scottie might have said on the deck of the Star ship ‘Enterprise’, ‘It’s amateurism alright, Jim, but nawt as we know it...’

AFR’s view is the deal is clearly not ‘pay for play’ in the professional soccer or rugby sense. Like, where a club or province forks out large salaries to players under individually negotiated contracts and players are free to hawk their skills to the highest bidder. GAA players still remain bound to their parish and county and the order of magnitude of the payment is so small that it wouldn’t keep a Leinster rugby player in hair gel for even a year.

On the other hand, it is the first time – and it is happening through the GAA – that players will receive a financial reward simply for being an inter-county player. AFR has no doubt that, in years to come, the GPA – strengthened by their recent success – will return to this issue and they will demand increases in the amounts being paid. In that sense, words like ‘thin’, ‘end’ and ‘wedge’ spring to mind.

The agitation for financial payment for inter-county players began in discrimination about five years ago and it is ending its current phase in discrimination as well. The discrimination began when successive governments started to fork out large sums of money to elite athletes through the Irish Sports Council in a futile pursuit of Olympic gold. It got worse when Charlie McCreevy gave professional sports people a generous tax break as they neared the end of their careers.

But it is ending now in discrimination as well. The payment is confined to inter-county players. Even at that, it discriminates between counties, depending on how far they get in major competition. It discriminates against women. And it discriminates against other sports. That’s four out of four. Not a bad day’s work for the Ugly Sisters or Humpty Dumpty.

If we might be permitted to blow our own trumpet here, just a little bit. An Fear Rua was the first writer anywhere to get the GPA off their self-imposed hook of so-called tax ‘refunds’ for players. We did this by persuading them of the merits of a State grants scheme on the lines of the Aosdána for writers and artists. Our scheme, which we called Gradam, had many advantages over the current proposal. In fact, it eliminates all its discriminatory aspects. Gradam would have meant an equal payment for everyone, it was open to all sports and it was equally open to men and women. And because it was grounded on the ‘cultural’ value of Gaelic sports it would be acceptable to the wider GAA membership.

We were also – by the way – the first ever to advocate a fifteen point Players’ Charter, covering club and county players, which pointed the way forward in how to treat players with respect. This track record is something Dessie might ponder as he mutters over his next latté in the snug in Kennedy’s pub, in Drumcondra.

We have earned the right to say - and we make no apology for declaring - that the GPA has made mistakes in this campaign. They should have held out for an Aosdána-type scheme, not the proposed farrago of laundering cheques through the Sports Council washing machine. Rather than grab the government’s first offer – like all good trade unionists – they should have rejected it for a better deal. And in line with best industrial relations practice, they should have balloted their members on the offer. That way, they would have bought time to see what way the wind was blowing at grassroots level.

Now, we make our next proposal to help put an end to this unseemly mess. We have the Taoiseach banging on about how difficult it is to get people to volunteer for anything these days. He even brought over an American guru, Professor Puttnam, to tell the Fianna Fáil parliamentary that too many people in Ireland are ‘Bowling Alone’. Yet, the Economic and Social Research Institute reported last year that GAA ‘volunteerism’ is a significant addition to national economic output. So, let’s bring these two things together. Let’s have a tax allowance granted to everyone – player or non-player alike – who can authenticate that he or she has completed a minimum number of sport-related volunteerism in any given year.

We think even Humpty might understand that concept. But remember what happened poor old Humpty in ‘Alice’? He ‘got a great fall, and all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again ...’