Keith Duggan Sideline CutStop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. If the day arrives when players are paid for winning the All-Ireland, then the GAA will be as good as dead.

When, like Mick O'Dwyer, you have spent a lifetime accumulating All-Irelands as a player and a manager, it must be difficult to understand just how elusive and sacred the notion of winning the ultimate GAA trophy is in many counties.

It must be hard to understand that the far-fetched optimism with which most counties set out to contest every All-Ireland year is what makes the competition genuinely spiritual.

The beauty of the brand of football espoused by Armagh and Tyrone may be the cause of some controversy but anyone fortunate enough to be in Croke Park the day those totalitarian football counties won their first All-Ireland championships could not but realise they were witnessing something transcendental. In the many words spoken late in the afternoon, the Armagh captain Kieran McGeeney went so far as to say that all he was doing was representing others on that field: teachers from his childhood, club coaches, family, men that wore the same orange shirt before he was even born.

Listening to him it was easy to imagine that Armagh's moment had been welling and building for almost a century and that he was privileged enough to be in his prime when all that trying came to fruition.

Of course, he made it happen and, rightly or wrongly, McGeeney has become an emblem of the Spartan lengths to which GAA athletes will go in order to perfect their minds and bodies for the epic summer joust that is the championship.

Undoubtedly, witnessing such extreme dedication at close hand probably inspired O'Dwyer's suggestion during the week. There is a growing body of opinion that the contemporary effort demanded of elite footballers and hurlers is bordering on the unacceptable. It used to be that the fitness levels and sophisticated training levels incorporated by county teams progressed at a rate of inches each season.

Then came the mind-numbing severity of the sessions organised in Clare during the summer of 1995, then the Northern explosion. In a decade, the scene has moved light years ahead to the point where players rarely talk about the thrill of playing anymore, only the chore. And it is hard not to sympathise with their grievances - to a point.

It was odd that O'Dwyer singled out the winning All-Ireland teams as the suitable candidates for a cash stipend of €10,000 per player. Given the repetitious nature of teams that feature on the winners' scroll, that move would create a class system in an organisation that prides itself on democracy. And it would also completely demoralise the players whose ambitions are still set on a provincial title or perhaps even a visit to Croke Park in the qualifying system.

But apart from that, the mere notion cheapens the All-Ireland heritage in which O'Dwyer has played such a rich role. Of course, the All-Ireland finals are lucrative days for the GAA. But for supporters and for the players, they are the day of days.

They are the ultimate in that most cherished of Irish conceits: the good day out. For the people in the stands, they offer a stage for identity and community and, most importantly, reunion on a scale of emotion and pageantry that defies the smallness of life today. And for the lucky few - the footballers and hurlers out there on the parade because of hard work, talent and good luck - the meaning of the All-Ireland final must deepen as the years pass.

Money can buy you a flight around the earth's orbit or facilitate gloomy explorations of the carcasses of ships marooned on the ocean floor. But it cannot land you in an All-Ireland final. The complaint most often mooted is that players' dedication to training eats into their earnings. And that is something the association has to address.

However, the pay-off is that playing in an All-Ireland final is literally priceless. There can be few experiences to electrify the soul as greatly as running out with your county on those September Sundays - particularly for counties appearing for the first time. But only the select few - including Mick O'Dwyer - can know that sensation. The rest of us just wonder.

Undeniably, the strain on the elite players appears to be nearing the unbearable. The most obvious solution for those who find it intolerable is to walk away, to quit and play social sport. And it is also high time to review the training practices that have brought inter-county amateur teams to the threshold of professionalism. Are all the hours necessary?

There does seem to be something joyless and responsive about the physical extremes county management teams feel obliged to put their charges through. Maybe instead of copying the harsher regimes, more enlightened approaches in terms of time management and coaching drills could be devised. How is it that Brian McGuigan, Tyrone's wonderful centre forward, could spend six months working and travelling through the Southern Hemisphere, return to the football in June and instantly re-establish himself as perhaps the county's most important player?

Of course, McGuigan is a natural sportsman and athlete and the game may come more easily to him than to others. But there are other examples that suggest there is room for latitude if counties weren't driven by fear of how many press-ups their neighbours were doing.

But the predominant philosophy is that unstinting work ethic and putting in that extra hour - the ethic of professionalism - creates a feeling of togetherness and weeds out weakness in sprawling inter-county players. The problem is that nobody is willing to shout stop. We are a long way from the day when an All-Ireland-winning coach is a beatnik in Grateful Dead threads earnestly explaining to Marty Morrissey that his team like nothing better than to sit around a campfire and discuss tactics with the aid of some prime Moroccan hemp. But the day of joss sticks in the dressing-room will arrive because, sooner or later, serenity will become en vogue.

In the meantime, whether or not the players want to be professional is immaterial. They cannot be. Once the foundation of parish and county is tampered with, people will stop coming. That is why the Sigerson and Fitzgibbon competitions are underground affairs in terms of public interest.

The college finals may bring together the most talented GAA stars in the country but the public can only bring itself to care so much about the fortunes of an educational establishment. And it is why players should be under no illusion that while the public does come to Croke Park to see them perform so wonderfully, they first and foremost come to see their "county", in all its infinite meanings.

It is demoralising for the players and representatives to have to constantly carp on about the ways and means of getting a few quid. It is equally demoralising for the rest of us to have to listen to it. If the stars of the championship are out there under sufferance, then what is the point?

This atmosphere must not continue because after a time a quiet poison will seep in and replace the joy. And then, as old Auden instructed, it will be time to cut off the telephone. Because the whole show will have gone kaput.