IN 1928 the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Gaelic League launched a national appeal for 24,000 half crowns from the general public with a view to launching an "Irish - Ireland Weekly Newspaper". For those too young to remember it is important to point out that a half crown was two old shillings and six old pence - 30 old pence or what would now be 12 1/2 new pence.

It is not known what became of the effort to set up the weekly journal but a receipt for one of the half crowns has turned up.

Apart from the efforts of the founder-father of the GAA, Michael Cusack, this was one of the earliest efforts at producing a publication aimed at the sporting community with emphasis on the GAA. How times have changed!

Apart from the enormous expansion in coverage of sport in newspapers there has also been a huge increase in the number of magazines and other publications concentrating on sport. Bookshop shelves are now laden with glossy magazines of all sorts aimed at sports people and sports supporters.

Many years ago this column launched a campaign focused on the lack of information available to patrons attending matches in many codes around the country.

It was argued that people who paid at the gate for a Gaelic, soccer or rugby match would be very lucky to get a sheet of paper with the team selections scrawled on and that they were entitled to better and more readily available information about their match which they were about to watch.

Thankfully times have changed, and fairly decent programmes are now quite common and efforts have also been made to improve public address systems in order to keep the customer informed of team changes and substitutions.

It must be admitted that some people on public address systems still have to learn that mumbling and chattering is not the ideal way to convey information. They should realise that people might want to make a note of changes or alterations and that a slow delivery is the best approach to clarity. Imitations of Micheal O Muircheartaigh's delivery are not best suited to help people scribble some information into a programme while standing on a bleak terrace on a wintry day.

To get back to the theme of sports publications, it seems to this observer that there was a watershed in 1984 when so many clubs and county boards in the GAA published histories to mark the centenary of the association. It seemed that many were brought to the realisation that this was a rewarding experience. Several of the publications were superb. In this regard, this column is proud its own club, Coolera in Sligo, was well served by John McTernan, a local historian of considerable knowledge.

Both he and many others provided not merely chronicles of sporting lore but what are, in fact, documents of social history which serve the entire community both within and without the sporting arena.

As a result of this upsurge in the value of information and keeping the public informed of what was going on, the major sporting bodies appointed professional public relations officers to give their various sports a better profile. This was closely followed by the introduction of sponsorship.

Eventually everyone prospered - players, supporters, publishers and sports journalists.

The launch of a weekly newspaper the Title a couple of years ago was part of this development which eventually led to a full-scale Sunday newspaper which helped to fill the gap left by the sad demise of the Irish Press Group, and in more recent times another title has come on the market, namely SportsWrite, a glossy monthly with a wide brief to cover all sports with serious and indepth coverage.

We are told that we now have much more "quality time" to spare and that much of this should be devoted to healthy pursuits. It can be argued that going to some sporting events can damage your health - watching the Irish rugby team doing its best to lose against Wales was heart-stopping stuff for example - but, by and large, sport is a healthy pursuit whether you are a participant or a spectator. One can only offer congratulations to the people who serve sport so well. Naming names would be a tortuous occupation since there are now so many publications covering every aspect of sport. Inevitably one would be left out of the list and a nasty letter might follow.

Nevertheless, this column offers congratulations to SportsWrite on its launch before Christmas and its ambition to provide Irish sport with a top-level publication covering the entire spectrum. It is a highly ambitious project and its backers, including the editor, Donal Keenan, deserve appreciation and support.

At £2.95 it is long way from the half crown contributions solicited in 1928, but it, and many other magazines of its type, provide all of us interested in sport with a valuable opportunity to keep ourselves abreast with sporting developments. We are well served.