Silent summer doesn't bear thinking of

Sideline Cut:Move over, Leon Trotsky. Revolution is in the air. Unless things change fast in the stolid, unhurried world of the GAA, the boys of summer will play no more.

Imagine a full Irish summer without the thrills of those championship Sundays. For decades - and more intensely than ever since the GAA began to understand television was not the enemy - the epic All-Ireland championship has become the measure, the sound and the calendar, of the meandering months from May to September. Think of the silence without it. Stop the clocks and cut off the telephones.

No more poetic radio bursts from Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh in full flow. No more traffic jams in Clones. No more sons and daughters of Ulster getting soused before the bells ring for 12 Mass on the main street of Francie Brady's town. No more gathering of the clans outside Hayes's Hotel in Thurles. No more getting sunstroke in Hyde Park and frostbite in Brewster Park, often on the same weekend. No more grumbling about Kilkenny winning too much. No more cautious observations from the Kerry camp. No more Colm Cooper. No more John Mullane. No more belting out Amhrán na bhFiann as though your life depended on it. No more games.

Unless the bosses in Croke Park and Leinster House get their acts together fast, the heroes of our Gaelic fields are going to pack their Bermuda shorts and follow the herd to Greece. Then where will we all be?

This weekend there will be much talk about the significance of the move to strike by the Gaelic Players Association. It will be declared a landmark week in the history of the association, a departure in terms of relations between the players and those who run the organisation.

Right now, nobody really expects the strike to materialise but the fact players have publicly acknowledged their willingness not to play is significant in its own right. And one thing is clear: when the elite hurlers and footballers across the land are moved to return ballot papers approving a freeze on competition, the joy has gone out of Gaelic games.

Why is that? At some point over the last decade a grim and austere mentality took a grip on GAA culture. Being a county man became a serious and all-encompassing business. Chisel-jawed players, when asked how they felt about a particular match, would offer the terse reply: "You don't enjoy the championship."

A surge in popular interest, amplified by the television revolution and the creation of the qualifying system, led to bigger crowds and increased pressure on players, managers and teams to win. It became almost obligatory for managers and senior players to solemnly declare that winning was the only thing that mattered - even though the All-Ireland hurling and football championships are absurdly tough and brutal competitions, designed to thwart and break all but the strongest counties.

Most teams play not to win an All-Ireland title but to survive for longer than expected. Counties got their acts together, devising blueprints for developing young players and tapping the altruism of wealthy businessmen with an interest in the county team. Teams tried to best one another by developing training purges invoking Nietzsche's old guff about the stuff that does not kill you making you stronger.

Fitness levels soared. Purists objected that maybe skills were plummeting. But they were drowned out by the roar of the crowd and the marketing of a tradition now being termed a "product".

"Sacrifice" became the most-used word in the GAA vernacular. That most weighted of words was used to explain the effort players were making just to live the dream of playing county ball. In a fattening and permissive society, these young men had something of the monastic spirit, living lives of self-denial, living for Sundays.

Over time, the consensus grew that they were amateur players putting in the same hours as professionals. And for the past few years, the cheering and the honour of the jersey have been insufficient compensation.

The GAA, with its awe-inspiring theatre on Jones's Road, has also changed radically in the past decade, pushing toward modernity and lucrative financial development with breathtaking confidence and haste. During a period when the old Irish pillars of religious and political infallibility came crashing down, the GAA - an organisation run by smart men who look at other sporting cultures to learn how they can adapt and develop and become ever more streamlined and modern - has reinforced its position and is flourishing.

For a time, those who run the game forgot about the players, believing the Sunday heroes would, as ever, turn up at deserted training grounds and run themselves to exhaustion before driving home with a county-board banana and a pint of milk for their efforts. Those days are over.

This is a dangerous time. What if the GAA get stubborn, if not over this strike threat, then over the next? What if they decide the games can go ahead without the participation of the elite guys in protest? What if they decide they can survive the GPA "nuclear option"? And if players are fed up and burnt out with incessant training and games, then something practical should be done about it. And if they decided to quit county ball, what would the players do instead on Tuesday and Thursday nights? "Go to the gym," is the likely answer.

Players cannot afford to forget these are their days of thunder. What if county teams were forbidden from meeting up for training before February 1st? Is the maniacal training from October through to the Sunday a team is knocked out of the championship genuinely necessary? Could not the same be achieved in half the time? If not, then why was it Tyrone's Brian McGuigan could return from a sabbatical in Australia in 2005 and become the best player of that year's championship?

And isn't it time to end the pretence that GAA players are professional athletes? They are not: the Australian football players have literally hammered that point home in recent Octobers. County GAA players are dedicated, gifted and elite amateurs. But they are amateurs. Still, when they watch the GAA bosses participate in the depressing commercial venture of a Gaelic games computer venture for the joystick generation, it is little wonder the players don't know where they stand.

With every passing season, the amateur ethos becomes more obscured and appears more difficult to maintain. What started out as a Corinthian drive among counties - an admirable and full-hearted collective effort to win a championship that promised nothing more than intense local pride and a transcendent feeling of having achieved something rare and immortal - is now threatening to go up in smoke.

It is a black day when players are fed up enough to vote not to play. If, as all sides say, the amateur code remains sacred, then it is time to safeguard it. It is time to put in place the small tokens like expenses and medical welfare that will make players feel valued and happy again. It is time for everyone to lighten up and remember not that it is only a game but it is a game that has survived and prospered because people have felt a want - and a need - to play it and help it flourish. The prospect of a strike could kill that need in many people.