Something of significance takes place tonight just as the GAA world and the media which covers it are recovering from one All-Ireland and gearing up for another.

In the Wellington Park Hotel in Belfast, a number of well-known footballers from Ulster are meeting with the intention of kick-starting a players' association which they hope will develop a national rather than a specifically provincial base.

The concept is not new. It surfaces nearly every generation but the approach of the current players is a bit more focused.

Initially their efforts will concentrate on the inadequate provisions for players' health insurance and also on the need for reform of the intercounty championships.

Organised by Donal O'Neill, a nephew of Down football legend Sean, who has worked in the Far East with Mark McCormack's IMG and who played McRory Cup with St Colman's in Newry, the body hopes to work in tandem with the GAA rather than as an external pressure group.

Their two target issues look safe enough. Injury compensation will strike a chord with many players - not merely those at the top. Down's captain this year James McCartan injured his back playing football and was entitled after a week's absence to £100 per week. Clearly it wasn't this extravagance which had him hopping up and down the sideline on his crutches during the Ulster semi-final win over Tyrone.

From the Croke Park perspective, there is a certain amount of ambivalence. It was suggested to me at one stage by a GAA official that keeping the compensation low was advisable in order to discourage "malingerers" - a not wholly unreasonable concern but one which if applied to all forms of social insurance would turn back about a century even the feistiest economic theories of the Celtic Tiger.

If there is an element of alarm within the higher councils of the GAA about the players' opinion on this matter, it will probably centre on the possibility of an inter-county elite being created within the games and the implications for amateurism.

To an extent, the train has already left. The elite exists and for all the glory open to such players, particularly at this time of the year, there are also heavy responsibilities amidst the soaring demands of top-level competition and the increasingly apparent daftness of the current championship system.

There is a strong case to be made for the separate cover of inter-county players. They are at the apex of the games and consequently a large element in the GAA's capacity to generate revenue.

Leave aside for a moment the implications of pay-for-play and the vague concept of semi-professionalism. There is an overwhelming argument that players shouldn't be out-of-pocket primarily because of inter-county commitments.

Whereas there have to be some restraints on such a principle - some sacrifices have to be made to sustain an inter-county career - something as directly attributable as injury must surely be covered. The question of malingering is hardly any more difficult for the GAA to monitor than it is for any other corporation involved in medical insurance.

It's one thing for a player's livelihood to take a back seat during his 20s and early 30s simply because there isn't time single-mindedly to advance a career when so much is demanded on the training field.

It's entirely another when the pursuit of intercounty honours leaves someone incapable of earning a living. The anomaly in this argument is that a broken leg in a junior B match can cost someone as much as a broken leg in a championship fixture in Croke Park.

On the question of the format of the championship, the arguments have been made frequently this summer. How it impacts on players is also clear. Having gone through the commando routines currently favoured by inter-county training, they are likely to find their season over after one match.

Again the problem with this demand is that the authorities will be wary of its consequences. Logic leads us to the conclusion that a summer league would be the best way of organising the inter-county championships. But what then of the clubs?

Given their roles in nurturing talent for the big stage, clubs would kick up blue murder over the sundering of the links between club and county. That's only for starters.

League formats have another implication - that of semi-professionalism. It's the reason professional sports elevate league over knockout. They need the gate receipts - in the broadest sense, including television rights and merchandising opportunities.

If players have regular matches over the summer, the pressure will grow to allow them to benefit in some way. The whole issue is of explosive significance to the GAA.

We are frequently told that players don't want pay-for-play but just to be looked after properly. This isn't quite accurate. Very few players would turn down the opportunity to be full-time sportsmen. Who can blame them? To be able to concentrate on playing without being distracted by financial worries has definite appeal.

Yet were semi-professionalism to be introduced, players would have mobility within the game and local loyalties would inevitably weaken with good players in poor counties simply migrating to the more successful units. Breaking the link between teams and places will destroy the great strength of the GAA.

THIS is a practical argument but any players' association is far more likely to run up against arguments based on the principle of amateurism - however much the GAA's most recently worked-out position on the subject loosened the strings a little bit.

Although Croke Park prefer the theory that amateurism has been retained, albeit watered down by the entitlement to endorsement money, it could be as easily said that the special amateurism congress of two years ago introduced semi-professionalism albeit watered down by limiting the individual's entitlement.

Former GAA president Peter Quinn chaired the Amateur Status Committee. He explained that the committee's report was intended "to reconcile the amateur ethos with changing social circumstances and changes in the sporting world" and "to give players what they can reasonably expect".

Somewhere within the thickets of those parameters, the future of the GAA may well be decided. If the new players' association succeeds in establishing itself as a coherent force, it will have a radical impact on that future. And tonight's meeting in Belfast will be looked back on as a watershed.