LOCKEROOM: Padraig Harrington tells a story about the last time he played in Croke Park. Schools final. Windswept stands. Soggy turf. One of those days a kid will remember forever. Harrington, keen and hefty, was centre back and brimming with high hopes.

He was marking a fair-haired fellow from St Vincent's CBS. Usual stuff. Shake hands. Eye each other. Sample the weight of the first shoulder contact. Then the ball was thrown in and the fair-haired kid went zero to 60 in two seconds. From parked to turbo. Just nipped the breaking ball and then swerved past the flailing Harrington. When Harrington picked himself up off the floor he knew two things. His wrist was sprained. Golf was going to be his sport.

Last week, Charlie McCreevy gave Padraig Harrington a big present. For what Harrington does in representing this country few would begrudge it to him. In terms of dedication, excellence and sportsmanship, he does us proud. There are obvious arguments to be made counterpointing the Government's parsimony with teachers and nurses with its back-slapping generosity towards sports people, but that's the bad old world we live in.

In journalism, it's a slight to describe someone as a fan with a typewriter. In Government at the moment we have fans with pursestrings. So Padraig and others got a big break. The fair- haired young fella from Croke Park was Dessie Farrell. He got nothing. Dessie is used to that.

What's happening? Okay, it's not the case that giving tax breaks to professional sports stars suddenly makes the pressure on the GAA to turn professional unbearable. Kids will continue to play Gaelic games and aspire to be intercounty stars at football and hurling because the games are wonderful and fulfilment in them is a great pleasure, and it's not so easy to decide that you'll be a jockey or a golf pro just because the tax breaks are good. Kids will continue to play intercounty hurling, football and camogie because those games are to a large extent buried in our sporting culture.

That's the point. Surely a major chance has been missed here, a chance for the Government to promote our national sports and recognise the massive contribution the games make to our cultural identity and our social cohesiveness and our tax revenue. And by missing that chance the pressure has been ratcheted up a notch.

I don't intend to go down the road of arguing that playing one game makes a person more Irish than playing another game, but it is impossible to deny the contribution which the GAA makes to community and welfare in Ireland. Generally, the existence of the GAA's network of clubs has not just provided many of us with our sense of place and a source of communal mingling and frequent celebration, it has also excused successive governments from the need to have a coherent regional sports policy.

But the GAA, the last great amateur sports organisation in the world, is hanging in there, getting Croke Park built while Eircom Park and the Bertie Bowl become the stuff of comedy routines. Still the GAA hangs in there, building facilities all over the country and providing the major sporting spectacle here year in and year out. For that the association is poorly rewarded and its top players aren't rewarded at all.

DESSIE FARRELL doesn't mind saying that he would like to be rewarded. Even those of us who wouldn't like to see that, who believe it would be the beginning of a transfer system which would erode the traditional strengths of the GAA, have to admire and respect him for his honesty. Lots of the players behind Farrell would like to be rewarded but haven't the integrity to say so.

Dessie has credentials, too. He is part of the landscape in this city where we live, a Dublin player since he left school. He has played through thick and thin, he plays through injuries, through the rows and the aggros, through the demands of his job and the needs of a young family. Then, when Na Fianna, the club he joined as a kid, grew more powerful and more ambitious he continued to give himself there without question.

For the last few years Na Fianna have trained and worked like a county team and Dessie has carried the weight of being their talisman and leading personality. Around Glasnevin and its hinterland Na Fianna's adventures have been a huge part of life, a huge source of pride, for the past half decade or so. And when Dessie is not playing he's wading through the mountain of papers at the end of his living room trying to get a better deal for other players.

So why didn't Charlie McCreevy say that he was giving tax breaks to sportspeople and that he would extend that scheme to GAA people? It wouldn't require much imagination. If Dessie Farrell gives a certificate into the Revenue at the end of a year certifying he was part of a 30-man intercounty panel, would anyone begrudge him a tax break on the job he does every day?

For all the moments and enjoyment that the Dessie Farrells and the Jamesie O'Connors and the DJ Careys give us, for what they put back in every day of the week, would anyone stand up and tell them that they didn't deserve that much at least? Just sling them back a cheque every spring.

Imagine it. The scheme would cost the Government a fraction of what it takes in tax revenue from the GAA every year, it would reward players while preserving the principle of amateurism, and it would make it more attractive for intercounty players to work a few years as full-time GAA coaches, supplementing that income perhaps with money made from personal appearances and promotional work.

Last Friday, I listened to Bertie Ahern speak at a 25th anniversary dinner for the Dublin

All- Ireland win of 1977. He spoke affectionately and knowledgeably about the influence of that team on the city. The vividness of the Taoiseach's memories left no doubt about the affection he has for the games. Yet, he and his Government have missed a wonderful opportunity to do something imaginative for the GAA.

Dessie Farrell goes out and does a hard day's work today. He is part of the broad tradition the Taoiseach spoke about last Friday. You couldn't put forward the name of a sports person who has given more. On a short-list of heroes, he's up there with Harrington and anyone else you care to name. Yet, comparatively, he is receiving even less this morning. There's something a little rotten about that.