Unlike his professional friends in this country, who get paid to play association football and rugby union and who are also ultra-professional in the respect they show their own bodies, McGeeney is a full-time amateur. He was a full-time amateur when he led Ireland out in Salthill last night, and he will be a full-time amateur when he lines out against St Vincent's tomorrow evening. And when Armagh give him the nod . . . they will probably allow him a little extra time to rest . . . before the end of 2006 for preseason training, he'll still answer their call as a full-time amateur. All of this means one thing.

The only person out there who cares, or really worries about Kieran McGeeney's health, is Kieran McGeeney himself. Everybody wants their pound of flesh from him. Every team asks for full value every time he puts on the club or county or country jersey. He's got no contract with any one of these three teams, of course. There's no sheet of paper to say that one of these teams really has ownership. Now, Kieran McGeeney has never complained about this crazy, potentially damaging tug-of-war. He's serious enough, and man enough, to do what he wants to do most of the time.

When I was young and foolish, I had to stand up for myself too. For 18 years I had a club and county to keep happy.

Halfway through that spell, I decided I was a Meath footballer, first and foremost. And any small change left over from my career as a Meath footballer, went into my career as a Skryne footballer.

I didn't train with my parish team that much, if at all, and I played only half a dozen matches each year, mainly in the championship and seldom if ever in the league. My home parish was decent about it, and I didn't hear too many complaints . . . though that's not to say there weren't any elders who didn't know any better, bitching and barking about me around the corner. In the last few weeks I've heard clubs cribbing and denouncing their own 'county men' for not being true 'club men'. You've heard them yourself, too.

This no-win situation exists for every single county footballer and hurler in the country. Take the example of Mark Brennan, one of the most athletic and brilliant young footballers in the country. Mark plays for Carlow. He also played hurling for Carlow last year. In one 12-month period, when I was calling on Mark to fill the Carlow number three jersey on the county senior football team, he was also playing for nine other football and hurling teams . . . senior and under-21, for his club, county, and college.

Nobody cares too much, but nearly everybody throws their eyes up to the heavens when Mark ever mentions that he tweaked his hamstring or wrenched his shoulder training with the other crowd a couple of nights earlier. And if he dared tell anyone he was carrying a cold, or had a bit of a temperature, they'd most probably split their sides with indignation and tell him to sweat it out of himself on the field.

The GAA certainly doesn't seem to give a tuppence about the plight of Mark Brennan and the hundreds of young footballers and hurlers like him . . . and they're mostly young and foolish . . . up and down the country who have asked far too much of them. When was the last time you saw anyone get up on his or her hind legs at Congress and demand action on these examples of bullish slavery?

The rank and file in the association are turning a blind eye. Remembering the late Cormac McAnallen, the great minds in the association are going to select county footballers and hurlers to help conduct a study into the frequency of cardiac complications in this elite grouping. And that's no bad thing.

The Medical, Scientific and Welfare Committee of the GAA . . . there you go now, you didn't even though this wealth of brainpower existed in the dozy old association . . . are recommending that this study is funded ASAP. Fine and dandy, but what about the overall physical health, and the mental health, of these young lads and ladies?

They make millions for the GAA.

They enthral hundreds of thousands of supporters in club and county fields, and they inspire hundreds of thousands of little boys and girls. This elite group is the most valuable commodity the GAA has. In truth, it is the GAA's only real source of wealth. And yet this grouping is used and abused by the association, whose only real live concern seems to be that one day there will be a really serious push for semi-professional status for Gaelic footballers and hurlers. In the meantime, these footballers and hurlers are burning themselves out at an alarming rate, and tearing around on bad roads, in fairly battered old cars, in the dead of night going home from far too many training sessions.

There are lessons to be gained from other sports in this country. Maybe not from the soccer fields, although we do see in the League of Ireland how a couple of dozen clubs survive on a semi-professional basis without any kind of real or sustainable revenues like the GAA has available to it. That's a lesson . . . a study, perhaps . . . for the future.

But on our most glamorous rugby fields, we have seen how the greatest footballers in their game have been taken from an unworkable past, when they were playing for Mickey Mouse clubs one minute and turning out at Lansdowne Road in front of a packed stadium the next minute, and are now living the lives of truly elite athletes.

Now, that particular lesson is under the GAA's nose, and the association would be advised to take a good sniff at it, and take it on board.

We're not talking about the money.

Not really. We're talking about respect, and the care and attention, which the best Gaelic footballers and hurlers in Ireland need to have shown to them.

Too much is being asked of them far too often. Kieran McGeeney, yesterday evening in Salthill and tomorrow evening in Parnell Park, is just one example of a great Gaelic footballer who has survived into his early 30s, and is still expected to put his own good health on page two of the GAA's priority list.