Derry chair Séamus McCloy has accepted the reassurances of Saturday's GAA Central Council meeting on the player awards scheme. McCloy was one of the leading officials to express misgivings about the Irish Sports Council funding for players, as agreed by the Government, GAA and Gaelic Players Association, prior to last weekend.

Central Council's decision to accept the funding in principle but devise a way of distributing it that didn't involve the county boards, as proposed in the Government document, has gone some way to defusing opposition.

"Well, you have to accept it if the county boards aren't going to be handling the money," said McCloy when asked if he was reassured by the weekend's decision. "I'm against it in principle but the GAA aren't paying the money and if the Government want to give money to our players we can't do anything about it. It's outside our remit."

McCloy had said last week the Derry county board would refuse to handle the awards money and distribute it to the senior inter-county panels. That issue, he confirmed, was his major concern about the scheme being implemented.

The scheme agreed by the parties envisaged county boards having a role in monitoring the conditions attached as well as distributing the awards with funding provided by the ISC. Agreeing that this procedure would place an administrative burden on county officers, McCloy said this wouldn't be an issue because the Derry board had always intended to refuse to participate and that neither was it his main difficulty.

"If you're asking volunteers to administer these grants, I've serious problems with that. We won't be doing anything in relation to it. It's nothing to do with us. If a paid official is handling it, that's okay."

Instead the GAA will look at ways in which the distribution can be centralised either through Croke Park or arranged through third parties, acceptable to the ISC.

"If that's the case," said McCloy, "I'm not going to be like a Japanese soldier coming out of the jungle still fighting a war I can't win. The administration was my biggest bugbear."

The Derry chair also elaborated on his criticisms of Northern Ireland broadcasters BBC and UTV, made at Sunday's annual convention. "BBC Radio on a Saturday go from one Irish League ground to another but on Sundays cover none of our county finals despite the big numbers attending. You might get a line at the end of a bulletin but there's no coverage.

"There's no blanket RTÉ radio and television reception. I think they've only around 45 per cent coverage in the north. Reception is very poor and if you're living behind a hill somewhere, it's non-existent. That's why we have to tackle this."

He said he had brought the matter to the attention of the Ulster Council.

Meanwhile a leading GAA official in Tyrone has resigned his role in Club Tyrone, the support organisation for Gaelic games in the county, over the player grants issue.

Mark Conway, a founder member of Club Tyrone in 1995 and its current secretary, was one of the organisers of the meeting in Toomebridge last week to voice opposition to the grants initiative.

But he says Saturday's decision by Central Council to approve the awards scheme has left him disillusioned.

"I have lost the interest now. The dynamic totally changed on Saturday and for me the dynamic that drove Club Tyrone is no longer there. It's not there for me. I can't speak for anybody else.

"But we are now into an era of pay for play, and for me whatever else Club Tyrone was about, it wasn't about that. For me it was about raising money, providing GAA facilities for our county, to put in place an infrastructure to support the development of teams, to do all of that.

"But as of Saturday, we are now in a position, having done all of that, we're now going to have to pay people to use those facilities, to use that infrastructure. And personally, that doesn't do anything for me, so I'm not interested in doing that.

"Every penny Club Tyrone ever raised went to the betterment of the GAA in Tyrone, but as of Saturday, for me, and I think for a number of other people, the fundamental principle of the GAA changed.

"We are now into an era of pay for play, where we give money, or encourage other people to give money to some of our players, simply because they are some of our players at a certain level. And for me, that's not GAA. It's not the thing that motivated me."

At last night's Dublin County Convention outgoing chair Gerry Harrington (Naomh Mearnóg) defeated the challenge of Val Andrews (Ballymun Kickhams) by 171 votes to 99.