TIPPING POINT:There are few things more likely to make true Gaels spew than a challenge to the organisation's self-image, writes BRIAN O'CONNOR

OH, SEÁNIE, it’s going to be a long week, and a lonely one. Not only are you a story but you’re a cause too. And that’s bad. Everybody loves a cause, but it’s no fun at all being one.

Ordinarily the recommendation would be to follow the creed that has sustained North Kerry through bouts of speculative crises over the centuries – “mouth shut-bowel open” – but fate’s foul humour has seen to that, pitching Cavan against Kildare this Sunday. There’s no getting away Seánie, for this week, you are, as they say, it.

So here’s how you should play things. Forget the GAA’s instinctive default hunkering response to flak, and try to ride it out with a touch of style. Throw all that “ethos” piety the sort of sidestep that made Kildare go all out to get you in the first place.

Remember what Tiger Woods ought to have done when he got caught tupping all that trailer-park totty, what Tiger shoulda, woulda and coulda done if corporate America didn’t have such a tight grip of his brains: emerge into that cringe-worthy press conference, peer into the camera and exclaim: “Where all the chicks at!”

But he didn’t, and so instead of a sharp humorous prick to the cod-controversy balloon of a rich, famous sportsman somehow amazingly being tempted by the lure of easy sex, we had months of copy-friendly prurience and faux-indignation at a generation of children being let down by their horny hero.

I don’t know what the Cavan equivalent might be – “C’mere, hii, would yeez all relaaaax and get a howlt o’ yerseeeelves” – but it would certainly cast perspective on something that has escalated to such an extent that this week is going to be jammers with hand-wringing proclamations about whether or not Seánie is the GAA’s very own doom-laden Bosman, or a wronged soul just desperate to play football. A bit like this in fact.

One thing to put straight: Seánie’s statement about just wanting to play football is true, but only up to a point. What Seánie wants is to play and win, or at least have a better chance of winning. There’s no doubt he would be sure of his game in say, Fermanagh, which has the plus of being a short drive away but the substantial minus of being much more likely to sink into the Erne than ever come within shouting distance of an All-Ireland Final.

And there was something desperately shabby about getting Seánie into a hurling match for a minute so that he qualifies to play for Kildare, although it did provoke the sort of attention never before seen on the Kildare county hurling championship.

There is also the not insubstantial factor that Seánie’s judgement in picking Kildare might be more than a little suspect considering what Meath subsequently did to them. But all told, Seánie gets the sympathy vote. For one thing it’s no fun being the focal point of so much attention.

Seánie could be swaggering around Cavan town like a mad-for-it Bee Gee, and getting the thatch extra spiky for all those fame-hungry blades, but it’s doubtful. There’s no backlash quite like a GAA backlash in terms of the bile and ignorance capable of being generated. And there are few things more likely to make true Gaels spew than a challenge to the organisation’s self-image.

Central to that image is loyalty to club and place, a deeply sentimental reservoir of feeling for location that happily coincides with more practical realities of basic organisation. And if you’re good, and up to inter-county standard, that sentiment determines which county side you play for too.

What Johnston, Kieren McGeeney, and the Kildare country board, have done is challenge that. Worst of all they’ve done it in full view and by the book. And that provokes a vista much too horrible for many traditionalists to stomach, which is a pity, because this could be just the beginning.

Basically this is about an individual’s right to play for whoever he wants to. That cuts the foundations out of the core GAA focus on geographical loyalty, a principle that is all very well if you happen to play for a strong county, but one which can condemn players in weaker counties to careers of mediocrity.

Seánie Johnston is apparently a pretty decent footballer who for whatever reason has lost that loving feeling for Cavan. Does that mean inter-country football should be automatically ruled out for him? Should his ambition to play at a higher level be a black mark? More fundamentally, is a system that fosters the unwritten rule that Seánie should just grin and bear it inherently wonky?

After all there are no such transfer issues when it comes to managers, who after all come from a place too, with many of them demanding quite substantial reimbursement for travelling from that place. And there have been players who’ve moved across county lines to the sound of no furore at all, despite circumstances that haven’t followed either the spirit or the letter of the GAA law.

What Johnston and Kildare have been, however, is unashamedly upfront; blatant if you disapprove – honest if you do. They’ve broken no rules, played the system like virtuoso opportunists and maybe provided a glimpse of what’s to come.

County boundaries might have been important when limited travel meant traversing a border was a big deal. But in an era when driving from Dublin to Cork takes a couple of hours, how relevant are they going to be, especially when there is a remorseless population drift eastwards to Dublin and the surrounding counties.

But most important of all is this: nostalgia for the tried-and-trusted spirit of the past is fine but it ignores one hugely important factor – inter-county players these days are required to work like dogs. The sight and sound of suited officialdom tut-tutting young men sweating their youth away in the pursuit of little more than being the best they can be would be hard to stomach even if those same players weren’t the main attraction, and not generating millions in revenue through the gates in return for little more than free kit and a few fancy bottles of water.

Seánie and Co could have been a lot cuter in handling all of this. If they had, there probably wouldn’t be a fraction of the brouhaha that has arisen around a player most of the country wouldn’t have pegged were he in a one-man line-up. But he’s important now because if the GAA isn’t fundamentally about the players, then what is it about?

There’s an old rock-’n’-roll story about a dispute between David Bowie and his old manager Tony DeFries that put the record company RCA in a position where they had to make a choice between the two men.

DeFries had master-minded his client’s rise to superstardom, organised every minute detail, ponied up money when there wasn’t any, cultivated the image, catered to every indulgent whim and ruthlessly created an empire that turned Bowie into a cultural icon. RCA didn’t miss a beat. It cost them, but they plumped for Bowie. And the reason, as they told DeFries, was simple – “You can’t sing”.

And nobody has ever paid through a turnstile to watch a county-board Gael in a suit.