This is something the GAA can live with

Since the GPA was founded in September there has been a sense that the increasingly antagonistic state of relations with the GAA was about to - as English soccer supporters might say - "go off" at any moment. Yesterday morning there looked every chance that the moment had come.

Were the players' group to have concluded the deal that was originally reported, Croke Park's authority would have been thoroughly challenged. This was to have encompassed an alternative awards scheme sponsored by a competitor of Eircell, who currently brand the All Stars scheme.

In the event things weren't that drastic. Instead the awards initiative was a Players' Player of the Month scheme, culminating in a Players' Player of the Year ceremony in November - the season of such events. And the sponsor, far from being a competitor, is one of Eircell's official agents.

The addition of a new awards scheme to an already teeming market will have the effect of drizzle in an ocean and the reported £130,000 sponsorship will just about cover the annual awards dinner.

Yet there is nothing unreasonable about the idea, nothing which should escalate hostilities between the GPA and the GAA. For a long time, there has been a gap for an awards scheme belonging to the players.

Five years ago the All Stars scheme was removed from the responsibility of journalists and transferred to players. The idea ended amid the acrimony between the sponsors Powerscreen and Croke Park and when Eircell took over, the selection reverted to journalists.

Some attempt was made to retain a players' input with a Players' Player of the Year in both hurling and football part of the All Stars banquet. This is operated on restricted franchise as only the 45 players nominated for All Stars get a vote.

The GPA claims a membership of 450, a claim which is hard to verify because the organisation refuses to publish a list of its members (presumably the annual gala dinner will be a masked ball and bad news if the sponsor wants it televised). Whatever the true figure, it represents a wider electorate than selects the official Player of the Year winners.

So there are official awards, journalists' awards and now players' awards. It's hard to see any harm in such diversity and indications from Croke Park suggest the official position - while testy as usual whenever the latest GPA stunt requires comment - recognises as much.

Much of the GAA's problems in dealing with the unexpected are caused by knee-jerk reactions. It was accordingly interesting that yesterday's response was a firm "no comment" rather than anything more belligerent - interesting because the GAA has always had something of a bee in its bonnet about awards.

When the GAA Writers instituted its awards five years ago, there was some wild talk about the GAA "owning" the rights to all such awards and the possibility of legally eliminating any such departure. Thankfully the nonsense subsided.

The new approach is the more sensible. If players want to organise their own scheme, let them. To challenge that right would probably be futile and sit badly with the recently professed desire to elevate the status of players.

Had the sponsorship cut across one of Croke Park's national deals it would have been a different matter. As it wasn't, the hare can sit for a while longer. The GAA's Players' Advisory Group can go about its business and the GPA about its own.

The interesting stage will be when the latter decisively cuts across Croke Park's interests. That didn't happen yesterday.