Liam Mulvihill's image might occasionally be that of a Sir Humphrey (and the comparison amuses the GAA's director general), but in general he says what he intends to be understood. So when Mulvihill draws public attention to what he believes to be a major issue within the association, it's as well to look a little closer.

A week ago, when speaking about the great Tipperary footballing disaster, he made no bones about extrapolating the possible consequences for the GAA at large.

"It possibly is a wake-up call for us too. It possibly is telling us that the intercounty scene is at boiling point and we're not leaving enough time for the clubs. I'm not saying that is a factor, but it's certainly something I'd like to see us investigating as part of the whole issue.

"If we are putting demands on players to play for their club and county, and we have always done that, there's no way we can take the intercounty scene much farther without very serious damage being done to the club schedules."

There, in essence, is the GAA's modern dilemma. Club versus county. The fundamental unit versus the shop window. Etc, etc. However cliched the terms of reference, the issue has to be resolved.

That Tipperary are in the dock for their treatment of the county footballers hasn't left much room for ambiguity. But the county ended up in the bind that caused their footballers to withdraw from the All-Ireland qualifiers because they were responding to pressure from elsewhere.

There's no doubt a senior club match shouldn't have been scheduled for three days before a competitive football match, but the reason for this crowded schedule was the significant expansion of the club fixture schedule, an admirable end in itself and one greatly encouraged by the GAA. For too long the habit of suspending club activity until a county team has completed its championship run has been allowed to wreak havoc with club fixtures.

This has caused a great disservice to recreational players of a certain standard, who simply have had to put their feet up during the best months of the year.

In recent years the GAA has striven to protect club players from this intrusion, but with only qualified success. It's a problem virtually unknown elsewhere, because no other games routinely allow young players to feature on up to a dozen teams in the one season. Even professional players nearly all turn out for at most two teams, a club side and a representative side.

The phenomenon of dual players alone makes a young Gaelic sportsperson eligible for a multiplicity of that commitment.

Increasingly there looks to be little alternative to drawing a line between club and county for certain purposes. For instance, some counties have made provision for designating fixtures as ones that must be fulfilled in the absence of county players.

That type of solution will have to become more widespread. Meaningful schedules of matches for ordinary club players have to be available regardless of what the county panel is doing and the availability of panel members.

Further complicating the situation is that both the club and the dual player are concepts encouraged by Croke Park and perfectly legitimate for amateur sportspeople.

Already there have been moves to restrict the number of under-age teams for which individuals can play. And recognising the imperatives of sports science - as is becoming the norm - the GAA should really be looking at young adult players and regulating the number of teams, or at least the number of fixtures, with which it's healthy for anyone to involve themselves.

This is not an easy matter to resolve. The club has an enhanced importance within Gaelic games and it would be assumed that a player's primary allegiance should be to his home team rather than his representative outlet at intercounty level.

But that's not the way of the world. The GAA is almost totally dependent on the intercounty scene for revenue and profile. The club may be the fundamental unit but the county is the bottom line. In order to exploit that fully, Gaelic games have radically revised their intercounty championships. Expanded schedules mean more matches and greater pressure on the players. Most don't mind, because they want to be able to play more matches at the top level. But as Mulvihill has pointed out, there is now growing pressure at both ends.

This issue isn't confined to the availability of players. A decision was taken by the GAA to phase out televised Saturday evening matches in response to complaints from county boards that their club fixtures were being affected by the broadcasts.

Again this is a knotty problem. Local revenue is important and the GAA had to respond to strong representations and did so. "The Saturday live television spot will either have to move to mid-afternoon or cease," was Mulvihill's analysis last March.

But this entails a significant promotional loss. An example of the strength of the Saturday evening slot can be seen from last year's ratings for GAA matches. The biggest audience for any qualifier and the biggest for any single match outside the All-Ireland series was the meeting of Roscommon and Kildare in the All-Ireland qualifiers on a Saturday evening last July. The audience was measured at 374,000 and placed sixth in the top 10 of live Gaelic games broadcasts. Another 10,000 viewers and it would have placed fourth and made the top 10 of all sports broadcasts last year.

RTÉ is biting its lip on this one. While it appreciates the difficulty facing the GAA, the national broadcaster sees the removal of the Saturday evening slot as a wasted opportunity, given the far bigger audience available at that time.

As one Montrose source put it, "It's like the difference between having a shop in a back alley and having one in Grafton Street. Everyone who wants to do business with you will find the alley, but there's a huge passing trade on the main street."

This weekend there are a couple of matches being shown on Saturday, with the Limerick-Tipperary hurling qualifier on deferred broadcast at 9.25 p.m. But RTÉ is walking on eggshells, not wanting to arouse the wrath of the clubs but hopeful - despite an earlier acknowledgement that there would be no such broadcasts in July - that a few Saturday evening slots can be filled between now and season's end.

Surely there must be some way of addressing this problem, such as partial financial compensation, and prevent the throwing away of a significant promotional platform. It's true that the clubs nurture and produce players, but the county teams are what create the environment of interest that recruits the players.

In other words, it's not a one-way street.

smoran@irish-times.ie