LockerRoom/Tom Humphries: So we rounded off the international soccer season the other night in Athens. Dull stuff, a perfunctory duty at the end of a tumultuous year.

And if we needed reminding of how like a classic drama the events of the summer and beyond have been, we had a little comic reprise of it all courtesy of David Connolly: bit player falls out with caretaker manager on eve of meaningless friendly! In a sour way, though, it all filled some column inches at a time when the very act of filling column inches needs some scrutiny.

You don't have to agree with Mick McCarthy's analysis of his treatment by the media to see that the entire business might usefully lead to a review of how we fill the sportspages, how we relate journalistically to teams and sports events in a time when TV makes a lot of straight reporting redundant. What do we do when, despite the clear symbiosis between sport and media (so neatly illustrated by the racing industry spat with the papers in Britain last week), there are unlanced boils filled with resentment on either side? How do we cope with the old trade-off between what has to be done for access and the need for journalistic independence? Is the sports section of the newspaper an entertainment adjunct exempt from the journalistic rules that apply elsewhere in the paper?

A few weeks ago, on The Late Late Show, Mick McCarthy departed the Irish management job railing, not for the first time, against the media and making unchallenged claims to victimhood. There was no bacon slicer, but bystanders were treated for smoke inhalation as the burning martyr passed by.

By and by the Genesis report came along and seemed to casually endorse Mick's world view. The team apparently need protection from the media.

This column's earnestly held opinion is that the media need protection from the team. If the team or any other bunch of stars don't want us travelling on the same aeroplane or staying in the same hotels or doing in-depth interviews that make them seem like interesting people, well, perhaps it is for the best. Perhaps we'll learn to write about sport in a more interesting way, perhaps the small, daily compromises will be done away with, perhaps neither side will feel they are in league with the other to sell something to the reader.

Mick McCarthy had some virulent critics, but he occupied a well-paid, high-profile job that never promised otherwise. He always said he'd be judged on results. In the end he was. The pity is that he didn't leave on better terms or with clearer understanding. When Mick signed up he knew that criticism came with the territory. As did the media profile that led to dozens of endorsement deals.

Mick said one thing on his Late Late Show appearance that should interest those of us who make our living as scribblers, though. Speaking about the most famous barbecue in Irish sporting history, he shook his head and announced to a horrified audience that the media had come and sipped the team's drink, eaten the team's chicken wings and enjoyed the team's company. Images of ravening media hordes pillaging across the island of Saipan sprung to mind.

The barbecue and the subsequent joint team/media attempt to drink Saipan dry will make interesting jumping off points in the future for students of journalistic ethics and for those concerned with the increasingly troublesome trade-off between access to sports people and the compromising of journalistic independence. Those of us who were there from dusk to dawn shouldn't have been. We shouldn't have been entering into pacts not to write about it all. Without getting too noble or pompous about the whole thing, the only pacts we hacks should be making are with the readers, not with those we cover.

McCARTHY'S assertions about the media tribe gobbling up everything in sight when they arrived across the beach in Saipan are a timely reminder that nothing comes free. Especially not the chance to bask in the warm light of the superstars. There's no such thing as a free chicken wing.

From free trips, to free rounds of golf to free dinners, we in the media compromise something every time we put our hand out to accept. We give over a little professional dignity, erode a little of our collective integrity. Maybe our stories don't get coloured by the compromise we make (and maybe they do), but something is always expected of us in return.

Eight thousand miles away from home on a Pacific island perhaps it would have seemed churlish to decline some wings and some beers when offered by people we had just shared a 23-hour journey with. Yet the act of offering wasn't without motive. We were being co-opted. We were part of the team.

Which reminds me of another Mick McCarthy appearance on The Late Late Show. Just a little throwaway moment a year or more ago when Mick was taking his seat and the applause was ringing in his ears and Pat Kenny made some remark about how well "we" were doing, and Mick granted that Pat in his enthusiasm had earned the right to use the word "we" in connection with his own national team. But others in the media? No way.

It rankled. On a gut level because it reflected an absurdly proprietorial attitude to the national team, and on a professional level because the manager of the national team clearly felt that the media should be conscripts in the drive to achieve the same aims as the team. We shouldn't cover them. We should cheer them.

And that's the nub of the thing. The dilemma. What is the media's role in dealing with local teams and local heroes and local leagues? How do we deal with the spin, with our own compulsive need to feel as if we are on the inside, with the human fact that we just plain like some of the people we cover and don't like others?

The very set-up of our business, the trade practices as such, are odd. We have to be critics of performance but pals of the performers. We have to provide some level of objective analysis and some level of insider gossip. You often hear theatre critics in Dublin bemoaning the fact that they might give somebody a bad review and then (yikes!) meet them at a first night a month later! Well, when sports hacks give somebody a bad review they have to ask that person for some quotes the next day. They have to march into the dressing-room lair and stick a tape recorder in front of the face of their prey and say something vague like, "do you think you answered your critics today?"

Perhaps what shocked Mick McCarthy and some of those around him this summer was not the robustness of the relationship between the team and the media when things went bad, but the fact that they had expected something different, namely cheering from the press box.

Perhaps we in the media should protect ourselves a little better the next time we enter into a relationship.