Mark McCormack started it all. He took Arnold Palmer, packaged him and told the world that they needed to buy into the hottest golfer of his generation. They bought. And they haven't stopped.

A trail-blazing Australian, McCormack and his company IMG are the current brand leaders in the retailing of state-of-the-art athletes. The factory churns them out and they are topped and tailed for the appropriate shelf by IMG.

The market has as many movers and shakers as bona fide athletes. Every top sportsman has an agent, handler, adviser, manager, consultant, father figure - call them what you will - and they play the tunes.

"Effectively we manage their careers," says Ian Doyle, who has snooker world champions Ken Doherty and Stephen Hendry in his stable of 20 snooker players and three golfers.

"One of the big problems I find is being able to educate sportsmen, although these days we're dealing with more intelligent boys than say 30 years ago. Firstly we tell them that their careers are not for ever. They have a limited lifestyle and they can no longer play at the top when they are 40. Then we get them to think properly in a financial way.

"We get them to acquire property as soon as we can and pay that off and we also insure to maximise their pension funds. We handle everything. We advertise and promote them at home and abroad and meet with their sponsors. We organise their travelling, their tax affairs, their tournaments. We effectively cleanse their minds so that the only thing they have to concentrate on is their sport."

In recent months, agents have been busy with Irish athletes. English rugby club Leicester toughed it out with Irish international Eric Miller and effectively kept him out of the game for several months because he had signed on the dotted line. BLE, the governing body of athletics in Ireland, played hard ball with Catherina McKiernan when she wanted to run in the World Half Marathon Championship. Even though she would have paid her own way to Zurich, BLE closed the door because she had refused to sign a contract which tied her into two of their events.

This week the IRFU decided to overlook Lions and Ireland hooker Keith Wood for the next two international rugby matches in Dublin because he wouldn't sign a contract. Wood also introduced the most fashionable phrase in agent-speak - "intellectual rights".

It is unlikely that any of the three athletes made their stand without significant back-up. Former international runner Ray Flynn handles McKiernan while John Baker, a successful Dublin businessman, looks after Miller's interests. To suggest that Wood took a legal stand on "intellectual rights" without consultation stretches credulity. His agent is Steve Cutner.

"My job is to get absolutely the best deal for my guy," says Baker, "but I have to do that within the structures that are there. You can't create a structure that doesn't exist here. I would say that the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) would still prefer a situation where they spoke directly to the players."

In rugby, agents are still coming to terms with associations who are themselves on a learning curve. The interface of amateur officials dealing with professional players is bound to cause some friction, but even professional sports that are long in the tooth are still constantly adjusting.

"A major problem for us is that players like Doherty and Hendry do not have the rights of the footage of events in which they have participated," says Doyle. "They have no rights and I think that is wrong. One has got to look at who owns the rights."

"Most of the TV rights are the property of the world governing body. Look at one of the best ever finals in the sport - Davis against Taylor. As far as I know they never received anything for the re-runs. We need better controls, better management. Top players are not getting the maximum return.

"I had to fight to get logos introduced. That was three years ago and immediately it introduced another income stream to the players. That was a massive breakthrough."

What agents want for their clients often conflicts with the athlete's federation. BLE need McKiernan to run in their events because she is big business. The IRFU need to recoup the money they have paid out in wages, so they need to use the players in a more productive manner. Conflict resolution is often the agent's primary business.

One of the more innovative arrangements in recent years has been the Irish team's players' pool during the 1990 and 1994 World Cups. Irish sports management company, Drury Communications set up the financial arm to deal with the pool, while the players agreed amongst themselves how to share out the proceeds. Commercial clients simply paid into the pool for work carried out by the squad members.

"We did have a strategy with the FAI," says former Republic of Ireland international Kevin Moran, who now heads up Pro Active Sports Management. "It was based on what we had with the clubs in the UK.

"I would say that the pool worked on an understanding basis. We knew that the main sponsor was Opel, so we wouldn't go out and get another car company. The players did nothing to conflict with the pool sponsors.

"We very much saw the structure also as a team-building measure. That was an important aspect - everyone doing it together - and that's why it was equally divided. What was understood between the players and the FAI was that they owned the name and logo (jersey and crest) and the players owned the intellectual rights; that is their own image and likeness."

Moran and his company also work with the Scottish soccer squad and operate a similar pool type system.

The reality is that federations must deal with agents. In athletics a company, Euro Meetings, has even been set up by the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) to grade what they now call Athletes' Representatives (ARs).

Euro Meetings went to 31 event organisers this season and sought opinions on various aspects of the ARs' work. They looked at their general behaviour, the fair play of athletes, communication, organisation and their value for money.

Ray Flynn, who handles Olympic sprint champion Donovan Bailey, McKiernan and others, was ranked fourth on the 1998 list, one rung above Sonia O'Sullivan's agent Kim McDonald, who largely deals with African athletes. The controversial Andy Norman, who arranges meets for Irish hurdler Susan Smith, is 20th, with former Olympic champion Linford Christie's company Nuff Respect rated 26th in the list of 44 management companies who represent athletes worldwide.

Inevitably, though, the buck stops with the athlete. "What you earn off the pitch is always going to be a fraction of what you earn on the pitch," says an Irish handler alluding to the current Wood scenario. "Except at the very top level. And here we're talking about the Michael Jordans, Greg Normans and Tiger Woods."

Agents: Who looks after Ireland's stars

Ken Doherty

Agent: Ian Doyle

Susan Smith

Agent: Andy Norman

Sonia O'Sullivan

Agent: Kim McDonald