Locker Room: Ah, put down your stones. This isn't a column about camogie. Those of you extremists who try to pebbledash Locker Room every time he writes "another bloody column about camogie" have no need to worry.

Certainly the column starts off with a little camogie but then it moves on thematically, opening out into a classic, dialectical examination of the mutually contradictory characteristics inherent in the philosophical principles underpinning modern living.

The column of course leaves a trail of riddles and literary jokes for the metaphrasts of the future to follow like bread-crumbs in a forest. First though the camogie. Then the usual guff.

When myself and my fellow gurus were preparing the 24 greatest living Irishwomen to perform their gaisciúlacht at last year's Féile na Gael competition we would (as often as resources and the War on Terror would allow) load the 24 greatest living Irishwomen into a bus and take them to play teams "down the country".

Here they would pass comment as to the strange smell of fresh air and inquire of their markers whether or not they lived in haystacks. Always (in Clare, Tipp, Galway, Wexford and Kilkenny) they would find themselves engaged in epic games against wonderfully skilled teams from "down the country".

And always afterwards we despairing mentors would be warmly entertained by our hosts and over the tea and sandwiches we would ask what the secret was. How could girls of 12, 13 and 14 be so good? Always on those evenings "down the country" the answer would be the same: "Sure we've nothing done with them really."

We hated that.

It took about a year before we twigged the difference between town and country. It wasn't their age-group structures or the mini-leagues being run efficiently that were different "down the country". It wasn't genetics or fresh air. It was school.

The girls were playing hurling with the boys in school and they were being coached. Coached well.

In small towns where hurling is important the schools always seemed to make a point of employing at least one past pupil or local player who had a facility or passion for coaching. The girls were playing good hurling every day of the week.

Coming from Dublin, where the object of the exercise in camogie seems to be to get the number of games a kid plays in a year down to the single figures, we had little or no chance.

LockerRoom thinks of those trips to the country every time he hears the high-pitched voices contributing to the debate about childhood obesity. The solutions to all problems in Ireland are draconian. Ban this. Ban that. Tax the other. You hear very little except the "god save us all" brand of despair which is the national speciality.

LockerRoom was at a coaching evening given by Paudie Butler a few weeks ago and Paudie pointed out something very salient from one of the big hurling games the week before. No need to name names but a plucky, non-traditional hurling county had lost to a superpower and a good goal chance for the underdogs had been missed when two players bore down on the goalie, who moved the right way and saved.

Paudie pointed out that both players were well known for their remarkable one-sidedness, that the goalie would have noticed this quicker than the rest of us and moved accordingly. The match wasn't lost on Sunday, said Paudie, it was lost on the training fields a long long time ago.

Another hurling year has passed and the blue bloods are in the ascendancy again. The minor title is back in Tipp. The senior tile is back in Kilkenny. The under-21 title is still being wrestled over by the same two counties.

You talk to players from any of those counties, delve into their background, and they'll always name some coach in primary school who took them out to the field and taught them to hurl.

That bedrock system gives those counties the first of a number of advantages on the ladder toward success (the counties who broke through in the revolution years did so with the help of extraordinarily charismatic and obsessive coaches. When they went the status quo was resumed).

Where's the lesson? For hurling it's obvious. For the country it's broadly obvious too. Primary schools in particular can make a huge difference, and in areas where a teacher is driven by club connections and passion they do make a difference. Not just to hurling but to the health of a nation.

Broadly speaking though, teachers are so downtrodden and disrespected in this country that they don't have the will to do the thankless job of training kids' teams and running kids' leagues after school days.

So surely the task is to remove some of the thanklessness from the job.

LockerRoom has a friend who is a teacher in the New York public-schools system. He also coaches soccer, and for this extra work he receives about $3,500 bonus per year. He loves coaching but the money is enough to buy a holiday or whatever each summer, so it all works out well. Just a little thank you from the city.

Surely if we are serious about the health of future generations and about the development of our sportspeople we need to adopt a similar approach here.

In a primary school where three or four young teachers would between them run class leagues and school teams, the cost might be 15,000 a year. That would be invested not in the teachers but in the future of the kids. For that money there would so many ancillary benefits it is impossible to list them.

That's genuine investment in sport, in health and in education.

Suppose you paid each participating teacher 5,000 (and give it tax free, for god's sake - it's as important to our future as writers and artists are). For the €16 million of public money being bunged toward the rich man's orgy down in the K Club, you could have 3,200 teacher-coaches already.

The nation has a network of sports clubs crying out for youngsters to join them. The traditional sports are increasingly in the business of sending out development officers like missionaries into the field. The word which comes back is always that primary schools as they stand are an unconquerable wasteland.

If we're serious about sport and the future health of the kids why don't we stick a euro tax onto the cost of replica jerseys and make sure it finances schemes which ensure kids actually sweat in those jerseys. And do the same with burgers and chips and the rest. Get kids out on the fields again.

In the same vein, Conor O'Donovan - one of the more thoughtful men in hurling - sent LockerRoom a note during the week with a simple, beautiful and splendid idea for the promotion of the world's greatest game.

Conor suggests the GAA, with the assistance of a sponsor such as Guinness, run a TV advertising campaign at Christmas time encouraging parents to give their children a present of a HURLEY.

Conor has placed the word hurley in capital letters as chastisement to those of us (the entire population of Dublin) who refer to the instrument as a "hurl".

Nevertheless, the idea is excellent and tinged with hopeful romance. No doubt too, hurls will be available in the capital.

A sponsor would be nice, but given that hurling is a living, breathing part of our culture and not just any other sport, some Government help would be welcome too.

We need to put the kids out the front door and onto the playing fields again, give them back the joy. It's not just about what they eat. It's about what they miss out on.

Give a kid a hurl(ey) and watch the fascination. Give the local school and club the resources and put the kid with 20 or so others and the world is changing already.

Little acorns don't have to be stout oaks.