By Colm Keys

Copyright independent

When Gaelic Players Association chief executive Tom Parsons was starting out on the road with Mayo in 2008, it was also the first year that inter-county players saw Government grants drop into their accounts.

It had been hard-fought after the initial push to have a tax-relief scheme for GAA players – similar to that which retired professional sports people in this country could and still can claim 40pc relief from any 10 years of assessment from their careers – was deemed inoperable.