Emmet Moloney writes for the 'Farmers Journal' and is a former sports columnist with 'The Kerryman'.

With the Irish Sports Council suffering an 8% cut in Government funding and talk of the GAA players’ grant being targeted, there’s a political storm brewing in the corridors of power at Croke Park. Emmet Moloney writes...

Sport and politics were always likely bedfellows. Jack Lynch is one of the best examples of a man who successfully matched his exploits on the field with those off it. I wonder what he would make of the current machinations, mostly off the field, that are engulfing our national games. Are they worse than anything he ever encountered within Fianna Fáil?

Maybe we should look at the example of Martin Cullen. Here’s a man that has stood over some of the biggest disasters in Government over the past 10 or 11 years. We don’t need to list them all, suffice to say his odds of ever becoming Taoiseach are up there with Cork’s chances of having a players and county board Christmas party.

Cullen is the Minister for Sport (a position occasionally described as the Minister for Fun). Traditionally, this post was a soft one – handy for tickets, foreign travel and photo opportunities. Apart from having to justify the fact that we don’t win Olympic medals, this job was easy. A nice stepping stone for exposure, but far from a front-line ministry and in recent years it has been coupled with tourism.

Then the GPA and the GAA (I wonder who pushed most) organised the players’ grants for county panellists on hurling and football squads. A mere €1,800 to €2,800 for each player nominated by the county. This winter is the first time the grant will be paid. But times are hard and the funds for next year are tight. So Cullen has to cut costs and an early 8% reduction for the Irish Sports Council was already announced.

Then, the Minister indicated that the GAA players’ grant may go by the wayside, despite the fact that this only costs the exchequer some €3.25 million. Why not just announce an 8% reduction? A bit strange that. While all this is going on, professional sportspeople in this country are reaping the benefits of a Government decision a couple of years ago to allow them reclaim their tax after a 10-year residency period in the country. Various codes will benefit from this scheme, in particular our rugby and League of Ireland soccer players. And good luck to them. But why didn’t they come under Minister Cullen’s spotlight? Why no announcement about a possible cut there?

Meanwhile, the Coolmores of this world are still enjoying their tax-free status on stud earnings. And, again, good luck to them. But the tax not deducted on half an hour with Giants Causeway would probably give half the Sligo football team a holiday with the wife or girlfriend they have hardly seen all year.

Should this comparison be made? Of course it should. Should we ask why the Government appear to be going after the players’ grants? Of course we should. Something isn’t right here.

One day out with the Dublin footballers and our Government easily rakes in the €3.25m in tax receipts. Croke Park is filled with 82,500 people. The tax take on liquor alone that day would run into the millions. A Munster final in Thurles? Think of the petrol used that day and the tax take there. The fares from packed trains from Kerry/Cork/Galway/Mayo to Dublin five or six Sundays a year?

Why go after €3.25 million when the scheme is only one year old and, in the grand scale of things, the money is quite small? There will be the anti-GPA brigade that will quietly smile to themselves and say good riddance to paying players, but they are missing the bigger picture. Our players were finally getting a small gesture to acknowledge the commitment they give. No-one was quitting their jobs to live off this grant. But some players are losing money to give this commitment and who can put a cost on the time a player is away from his children, family and friends?

Now Minister Cullen, it seems, is talking about putting that price at zero. Good luck to him. I just hope that he hasn’t been having his nails done in Florida, played some real expensive golf courses at the Olympics or wasted money on voting machines, storing them or anything like that. Because someone will find out.

Times are tough and will get tougher. We know that. Fed up as we are with hearing this, it will not stop us all having one last lash this Christmas. But then the dark days of January will come and it is on those nights when we are staying in by the fire that county panels will be running up hills and sprinting around in the cold, soaking wet, on heavy pitches. These are the guys that six months later will be hearing abuse shouted at them from the sanctity of the terraces – from those that stayed by the fire.

Our games are changing because that is the nature of life. Maybe we will have pay-for-play some day. But not now. The climate will decide when. Not the GPA, GAA or, God forbid, this Government.

However, the fight for retaining the players’ grant scheme must be taken now. The GAA and GPA are obviously headed for another kind of showdown, with Dessie Farrell’s militant language in recent times merely the beginning of the latest spat. Watch Nicky Brennan have a cut back before the end of his term. They are both being blinded by trees in search of woods. And we the wider GAA world will suffer. Our elite players are already. The GPA are coming on too strong and the GAA aren’t coming on at all.

This is too important. The GAA is too important to the fabric of this country to be treated like this by an incompetent Government, falling over itself to say and do the wrong thing.

We should all be standing up to Minister Cullen and his kite flying. It would be more in his line to leave the players’ grant scheme alone at best. At worst, he can cut it 8% to bring it into line with the rest of his budget. Allowing himself, and by definition Fianna Fáil, to be dragged into the underlying GAA/GPA tensions would be foolish. But, alas, he does have a track record.

To catch Emmet's latest column, get 'The Farmers' Journal' every Thursday...