Game to the British one as Irish called out

On Tennis: At this year's Wimbledon there are 43 British players. They are playing in men's and ladies singles and doubles as well as junior competitions.

None of them, with the exception of Tim Henman, now ranked 72nd in the world, would have been allowed put a foot near the pristine grass if entry had been based on merit alone. Andy Murray, the one other Briton capable of winning a few matches, is of course absent because of injury.

Wimbledon is one of the means British tennis has to develop players; it is also a source of funding for them. It is a stepping stone the likes of which Irish players can only dream of.

A first-round loss in London SW19 earns you £10,000. If you win just one match, you are guaranteed £16,325. That's as much as most Irish players can hope to earn in the entire year.

As Ireland stages its two Futures events, in Dublin and Limerick, each with a total prize fund of €11,000, and the Irish Open in Fitzwilliam, with a total prize fund of €37,000, the gulf is clear in terms of the soft handouts to the British players (the kind of handouts Irish players too would collect if we staged a Grand Slam event). Whoever wins next month's men's Irish Open will pocket €5,400; first-round losers will walk away €520 richer.

Meanwhile, those in the mix to pick up £10,000 cheques in the Wimbledon singles include the 263-ranked Jonathan Marray and the 226-ranked Joshua Goodall. As for the £5,050 waiting for first-round losers in doubles, the candidates include the 870-ranked Neil Bamford and the 979-ranked James May.

In Ireland Louk Sorensen, at 336 our highest-ranked player, Conor Niland (385th) and Peter Clarke (981st), will never be invited to play at Wimbledon unless they qualify or get well into the top 100.

There are 128 places in a main Grand Slam draw but with significant numbers of those going to British players who don't qualify on merit and the odd wild card for American, Australian and French players who don't qualify on merit, the difficulties for Irish players are clear.

Australia, France and America all try to trade places for players because they too hold a trump cards in the staging of one of the three other Grand Slams. And thus many British players, especially juniors, can expect to be making travel arrangements for a run-out in Melbourne Park next January, for the brief trip to Roland Garros next May and for the transatlantic flight to New York's Flushing Meadows in August.

This year the Irish Federation Cup player Kelly Liggan tried to gain entry to the main draw at Wimbledon via the fairly savage qualifying event at Roehampton, not far from Wimbledon. But she fell short in the first of the three rounds players must win to make it into the first week proper of the championships.

Liggan can now only look on and watch from afar as players she is patently as good as have their 15 minutes of fame and handy little earner on the most famous courts in the world. We can think of the 274-ranked Elena Balacha, the 232-ranked Naomi Cavaday - who took the former champion Martina Hingis to three sets and should have won - and the doubles players Ana Fitzpatrick, ranked 489, and Karen Paterson, ranked 432. And who would begrudge them for taking it while they can?