IN days when footballers are on weekly wages of £¼million and golfers are able to take home a whopping $7million for one tournament, it is easy to concede sport as a whole has lost its true values and soul.

But just across the Irish Sea, there is a traditional sport that still bases its principles on its origins and that is Gaelic football.

Ahead of last weekend’s All Ireland finals at Dublin’s Croke Park, I watched an interesting feature on Sky TV about the sport which, having visited the huge stadium in the Irish capital, I already know is part of the fabric of the country’s heritage.

Gaelic football may be more prominent these days having signed a three-year television deal with the aforementioned Sky earlier this year to screen live matches, but it is still much the same sport that has been played for generations.

To put it in basic terms, Gaelic is how English football used to be. Teams are made up of home-grown talent, much like the old days when Wanderers had star players born and brought up a stone’s throw from Burnden Park that went on to star for the Whites.

But there are still differences that are unthinkable compared to the English game and that is the fact there are no transfers. Why? Well, because you are only eligible to play for the county where you were born.

Imagine that applied to the current Premier League.

The Manchester derby would have just one player on the pitch in the shape of new youth graduate Tyler Blackett; while on Merseyside, given the current availability, this weekend would see Steven Gerrard, in the red corner, taking on Leighton Baines in a one-on-one Scouse showdown.

Of course, while importing foreign talent has boomed in the two decades since Sky’s cash injection into football, even those early 20th century sides like Wanderers were not solely made-up of local lads – and transfers, albeit on a less grand scale, still took place.

You just wonder how long Gaelic will be able to hold out and not follow suit.

Many coaches and former players feel it makes the sport special that you represent the area you come from and play alongside friends you have grown up with in battles of pride.

But then the consensus is that it is only a matter of time before the pressure is piled on the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) to distribute their new-found wealth to the players as well as to the clubs and the grassroots game.

You have to give those amateurs who play Gaelic in between doing jobs as mechanics, farmers or office workers huge respect for carrying on the tradition. But I fear, inevitably, money will talk and another soul will be lost.