In ten years' time, 15 years, 25 years tops, Dessie Farrell might find people thanking him.

Right now, and these last couple of weeks, as he drives around the country texting and talking to groups of footballers and hurlers in local towns, he is not even sure of the warmest of welcomes. The GPA claims 1,400 members on its books, but the majority of these are passive and perilously close to being disinterested in change.

How many footballers and hurlers are looking for real 'trouble' remains a million dollar baby of a question.

How many would be bothered going on strike?

Next Sunday, if they were called upon, if they were told by the top table that most of their mates and most of their opponents in other counties had voted to abandon all dressing rooms on the afternoon of a full Allianz NFL and NHL programme, what on earth would we see happening?

Dessie Farrell doesn't know for sure, and that is his greatest weakness at this time. That's why he's not going to pull the pin just yet, that's why he can not even consider a nuclear option.

Some of the big teams and a portion of the real stars of Gaelic football and hurling might have the courage to follow his lead. But the teams and the lads halfway down the GAA ladder, and those rooted at the bottom of the ladder, are they going to risk the wideopen ridicule? Their careers as intercounty footballers and hurlers are held together by sticky tape. They are treated as the lowest form of GAA life by their own county boards, and the people in their own counties don't give them tuppence worth of extra respect above most club players.

Are these lads going to risk becoming a laughing stock?

Because people will laugh, and county boards will only likely further ignore their 'valid' claims and 'far-fetched' requests . . . for boots and petrol money and other bits and bobs.

Those who line up with Dessie Farrell, if there is a request to assemble and line up, will truly get to share in being classed as troublemakers and rabblerousers. Greedy agitators who should be thankful to God for giving them two arms and two legs, and a magnificent choice of talents.

Nah, there'll be nobody lining up outside any GAA ground. Not for a while.

Dessie Farrell and the GPA will have to plod along.

Hopefully Farrell and O'Neill, and the clutch of household names like DJ Carey and Kieran McGeeney, will have the stomach for slow progress and will never lose the courage they are openly displaying in seeking change.

The day will come when everyone in the organisation, or nearly everyone, will benefit from the work being done this week, and the great amount of work we have seen over the last few years.

This work has seen Club Energise, for instance, putting goods and money into the game for the company's own welfare and the welfare of GAA players. Opel has followed C&C's example this week by also digging into its pocket and putting its shoulder to the new Players' Awards announced earlier this week.

This is all good work and good news for everyone in the GAA, and not just for the most talented footballers and hurlers in the country.

Times are changing, and ultimately everyone on every step of the GAA ladder will be rewarded in some shape or form.

The most talented, the hardest working players and those players who play for counties with the strongest brand recognition will benefit most. That's tough, but that's life!

There are rich and poor in GAA life, and there always will be.

Dessie Farrell's working life as GPA chief is not going to alter that, and those who continually point fingers at him and claim that his efforts will only feather the nests of the biggest and the best are being deeply unfair, to the point of stupidity.

The more we can do . . . and the more Dessie Farrell and his colleagues can do . . . to help Gaelic footballers and hurlers become the best they can possibly be in their GAA lives, the stronger our games will be, the more exciting and rewarding they will be for everyone watching, and the greater our association's revenues will become.

That's what the GPA is aiming to do. And there can be no doubt that the vision Dessie Farrell has for Gaelic football and hurling 25 years from now is not something to be feared, or is not something threatening or ruinous. Though he may have to continue acting like a troublemaker occasionally over the next decade or so.

But, y'know what?

The biggest bunch of troublemakers this country has ever met in its history are being feted and honoured in every newspaper up and down the country this month, and on every TV station. The lads who left Dublin behind them, bombed out and bullet-ridden, 90 years ago didn't have too many people thanking them either.

Dessie's no Pearse, and I'm not trying to go there, don't worry!

And the GPA's fight for the rights of Gaelic footballers and hurlers is not about to be compared, or put down on the same page, with the greatest fight of all for Irish freedom. If I go there, then good, old-fashioned GAA folk throughout the country will just keep on sniggering . . . at Farrell and also at that crap Hayes was writing in the Tribune.

But it is a pity that most of us inside and outside the association having been poking fun at Dessie Farrell and the country's Gaelic footballers and hurlers just because they want a little bit more respect.

That's the GPA's starting point with the GAA and the Government. A question of recognition, a question of respect!

And what's so wrong or rib-tickling about that?