The old cliché says a good picture is worth a thousand words, recalls An Fear Rua...
If so, then the picture on a recent Monday on the sports pages of Dr O'Reilly's Middle Abbey Street Organ showing 'delegates' to the Annual General Meeting of the Gaelic Players' Association (GPA) in Killarney spoke eloquently about the reality of the current state of the GPA. It showed a conference room in the hotel with about thirty to forty players, in casual gear, all seated to one side of the room and being addressed by the GPA Administrator Dónal O'Neill. You didn't have to look too hard to see that, just at the edge of the picture's frame, there were a lot of empty seats. Obviously, the lads had been asked to squeeze up and fill the camera angle in one corner of the room.

It reminded AFR of the practice known in politics as 'doughnutting'. Now, this is not some kind of nefarious sexual deviancy practised in the aptly-named 'party rooms' by some of the more reprobate denizens of Leinster House after a late-night sitting. Though nothing that some of them lads would get up to would surprise AFR too much. Nor is it a variant used by Bill and Monica in the Oval Office after he'd puffed on his second or third cigar. Indeed, when you think of what the same Bill and Monica managed to get up to with a cigar, you were probably wiser to refuse a doughnut if offered one with your coffee on a visit to the White House. Oul' Ronnie 'Star Wars' Reagan apparently kept a well-stocked jar of jelly beans on his desk. Maybe that explains that faintly distant look Nancy always seemed to have in her eyes ? Ah no, 'doughnutting' is perhaps more mundane, but is no less important to politicians than some of the other aforementioned activity.

'Doughnutting' happens when there is live coverage of the Dáil or Seanad (or the US Senate, as the case may be). It means that when the House cameras are focussed on a particular speaker, four of five colleagues form a 'doughnut' in the seats around him or her so that they look like they have a rapt audience and that the House is well-filled. Of course, a slightly wider camera - if that were permitted under Oireachtas rules - would show the 'doughnut' in turn surrounded by scores of empty seats!

Let's be fair to the GPA. The tone of their gathering seemed to be sensible, conciliatory and low-key, unlike some of Mr O'Neill's earlier cunning PR stunts. Indeed, the very man who attempted to gate crash the last GAA Congress - with about twenty reporters and photographers in tow - this time round excluded the media from hearing the meeting's deliberations, only providing media briefings afterwards. Not exactly consistent, eh ? But then again, if you've only managed to attract forty out of a claimed four hundred members, it doesn't leave you much choice but to be sensible, conciliatory and low-key.

As far as we can discern, these are the current concerns of the GPA:

• No 'pay-for-play' but a proper re-imbursement of players' expenses and costs, including loss of wages
  
• To investigate the real cost to players of preparation and playing for inter-county
  
• To request a meeting with the GAA
  
• To get their newly elected Chairman, Dublin star Dessie Farrell, onto the GAA's Players' Advisory Group (PAG), chaired by Armagh stalwart Jarlath Burns.
  
• Support for a closed season
  
• A fairer system for arbitrating on players' appeals against suspension
  
• Welcoming the introduction of drug testing, but seeking more information
  
• Getting Croke Park to look at an insurance scheme negotiated by the GPA
  

AFR has no problem in saying that all of these are genuine, legitimate concerns of players - but not just of inter-county, of club players as well. Which is why he differs a bit from the elitist approach of the GPA. In addition, while compensation for expenses and travelling is a 'no brainer', claims for loss of wages - particularly loss of overtime earnings over, say, a hundred nights of training, could become astronomical. AFR believes that if players were well looked after expenses-wise, most of them would have no interest in compensation for loss of wages or overtime. An All Ireland medal in your back pocket is fair old compensation for the loss of overtime, and a much better long term investment for a young player, if you want to take a purely mercenary view of the matter.

However, the decision to select Jamesie O'Connor, Dessie Farrell and Séamas Moynihan into officerships was a stroke of genius, worthy of one of John O'Mahony's shrewdest sideline re-shuffles. AFR predicts that this will be the single most important decision taken by the GPA at their Killarney weekend. For one thing, these are respected and well-liked representatives of the best in GAA and no one in Croke Park will have any difficulty in meeting them at any time. For another, it takes some of the spotlight of Dónal O'Neill and de-personalises the whole matter. If all of this presages a more conciliatory and less confrontational approach by the GPA, that is all the better and that decent man, Seán McCague will not be found wanting in the openness of his response. Decoding McCague's response to the GPA weekend, it means 'Lads, ye can have whatever ye want, provided we talk in private and Dónal loses the media megaphone...'

Now, more than ever, there's an opportunity for the GPA to get off their various public hooks and do a real job for their player-members. But - as the Longford Slasher Himself, Oul' Uncle Albert used to say - opportunity comes to pass, not to pause. If the GPA doesn't follow up quickly on Seán McCague's open-handed response, the opportunity could be lost.

When you look at the list of issues identified at the GPA meeting, there is nothing on it that is not already being tackled, or could be tackled more effectively, by the official Players' Advisory Group (PAG). AFR believes Croke Park should appoint Dessie Farrell to the PAG and indeed go further and introduce direct elections by players of representatives to two or three seats on the PAG. This would be a statesmanlike manner of paving the way to a gradual rundown and phase out of GPA activity and a gradual hand over of the representational reins to the PAG, without any loss of face on either side.

That may seem a hard thing to ask of Dónal O'Neill after all the effort he has put into establishing the GPA. But it is the only realistic way forward. In the end, this may be the real sacrifice he is called on to make in the interests of his members. If he does so, AFR would not fear for his future. He already demonstrated enough organisational and PR skills to ensure he would be snapped up by some company operating in that area.

Who knows, not only may Dónal become an eminent spin doctor, he might just become Ireland's next 'Doughnut King'...