While that unpleasantness gave rise to a popular musical, the appointment of Dessie Farrell to the helm of the Gaelic Players Association and its transformation from outfield guerrilla group to powerful sporting union has had a more real and long-term impact on Irish sport.

This afternoon, the members of the association will stage their first direct action . . . a "dignified protest" which will delay the throw-in of all National League fixtures by 15 minutes . . . in pursuit of their stated aims to have the enormous personal and professional sacrifices made by gaelic players recognised by the GAA. Further action, including an all-out players' strike, hasn't been ruled out.

There was a time when, at least as far as the GAA was concerned, the GPA meant trouble. Now, it means business.

It benefits hugely from voices of reason. Kieran McGeeney and DJ Carey petition for the GPA with All Ireland medals in their pockets and its founder, Donal O'Neill, has a wealth of experience in sports management and marketing.

But above all, it is Dessie Farrell, the talismanic former Dublin captain, who brings to the GPA top table its missionary zeal, combining a passion for the game he loves with compassion for those it treats so poorly.

Since the day Roy Keane left Saipan, Farrell has been a full-time paid officer of an association that campaigns for its members to receive some financial recognition of their efforts. Ironically, there is a real sense that the man who once paid another nurse to cover his shift so that he could play in an All Ireland final, would do this job for nothing.

His father Sean is from Kildare and his mother Anne is from the Donegal gaeltacht, giving Dessie, the elder of their two children, that decent streak of rural Ireland so commonly found in Dublin footballers.

Sean Farrell was a psychiatric nurse at St Brendan's, Grangegorman; Dessie was 10 years old when the family moved from Cabra to a staff house in the grounds of the hospital. It became his playground and his football pitch.

He had been to Croke Park with his father . . . to watch Kildare . . . and while he was aware of Kevin Heffernan's heroic Dublin team in the 1970s, he was a couple of years the wrong side of starryeyed about their achievements. Still, he was a naturally gifted player for St Vincent's CBS and appeared in two Cumann na mBunscoil finals. Two of his teachers moonlighted as underage coaches for Na Fianna and they brought young Farrell along to train with the under-10s. With school and club sorted, he began to dare to dream of county.

He left school in 1989 with a decent Leaving Cert and no ambitions outside sport. He had played hockey for Leinster . . . the hospital had its own club . . . but in spite of his love of the game, had felt an outsider in a predominantly middleclass domain. Football was different, north Dublin the nursery for generations of great players.

But there was an opening for a day job and it was briefly filled by a course in electronic engineering at Kevin Street IT. He quickly decided it wasn't for him and transferred to medical laboratory science. That was closer, but still no cigar, so at the end of his first unhappy year in college, he enrolled as a trainee psychiatric nurse at St Brendan's.

While he was still at Kevin Street, he was invited to train with the Dublin senior panel. He had made an impression as a minor for the county, but an injury in his first senior challenge game sidelined him for a year. He would not become a regular in the Dublin team until 1992.

In spite of injury and an abrasive relationship with former manager Tommy Lyons, he would hold his place for more than 12 years, collecting an All Ireland title, six Leinster titles and a National League along the way. In 1997 he was appointed captain, a popular choice with players and supporters alike.

The break-up of his marriage . . . for which he claims total responsibility . . . in 2002 plunged him into depression. In his best-selling autobiography, Tangled Up In Blue, he writes articulately about his condition and condemns the silence that surrounds mental illness: "One of the great lessons I'd learnt in my psychiatry training was the importance of effective communication, but when difficulties came to my own doorstep, I was too proud to talk to anyone." He eventually sought professional counselling and later, through the GPA, fronted a suicide awareness campaign targeting young men in the North Eastern Health Board region.

He had left nursing in 2000 to take up a job as a medical rep. At the same time, he became heavily involved with the fledgling GPA, which had been founded by Donal O'Neill with the help of Farrell's Na Fianna team-mate and Armagh captain, Kieran McGeeney. The association aimed to unite players into a single lobby but, at the start, progress was slow. A high-profile launch was followed by a depressingly fumbled Players' Awards ceremony that saw the top prize broken up and returned to the association. Farrell held his hands up for bad judgement and pointed out with refreshing honesty that he and the association were on a learning curve.

Five years on, it seems the GPA has learnt its lessons well. Moreover, it has won the sympathy and support of a majority of GAA fans, many of whom were initially deeply suspicious of the raggle-taggle association. Next month, incoming GAA president Nickey Brennan will sit down with Farrell and his board and expectations are high that they will come away with the kind of deal players like Dessie Farrell could scarcely have dreamt of in their day.

"I would have loved to have earned a living for doing what I do best, " he wrote in Tangled Up In Blue, "where I could have applied myself completely without a nagging sense of something unfulfilled."

Still, in a blue jersey he fulfilled so much. He is highly regarded by his former team-mates . . . Keith Barr describes him as "a great leader on and off the field, and an honourable man. When he believes in something, he believes in it all the way." The fans adored him, perhaps above any other player of his generation, and turned out in their thousands for his giddy book signings last autumn.

In the dying seconds of his inter-county career at the end of last summer, he scored a goal against Tyrone and, turning to his beaten team-mates, took his jersey in his fists and showed them some things are always worth fighting for. His passion and his skills have never been in doubt; this weekend and in the weeks ahead, he'll need to find the diplomacy and maybe a dash of cunning to match them.

In this newspaper last weekend, former Meath footballer Liam Hayes wrote:

"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 yearsf 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."

Those who played with him and those whose playing careers might now depend on him will expect nothing less.

C.V.

Occupation: Chief executive of the Gaelic Players Association Born: 25 June 1971, Dublin Educated: St Vincent's CBS, Glasnevin; Kevin Street IT; St Brendan's Hospital Married: To Noreen Mulry, 1996;

separated 2002. Two children, Frankie and Emma In the news: The GPA will today stage its first official protest before meeting incoming GAA president Nickey Brennan