IF football's fat-cat players are so alarmed about their union's shrinking share of television money that a strike is seen as the only option, they should look to themselves for a partial solution to the looming crisis.

The Professional Footballers' Association is to ballot its 3,500 or so members in the next fortnight on industrial action which would result in a boycott of televised games.

On the face of it, their cause is a worthy one.

PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor, who made his name as a player with Birmingham City, is an intelligent, articulate man - a rarity in football.

He argues that, while TV money has almost doubled under the latest £1.65bn three-year deal struck by the Premier League, the PFA are being offered a significantly smaller proportion than they were four years ago - less than one per cent compared to five per cent.

The effect, the PFA say, is that players, like those whose careers have been cruelly cut short by injury, will suffer.

What Mr Taylor and Co. want to know is where the TV revenue shortfall is going.

But the unpalatable truth for the PFA is that much of it goes into the pockets of its own members via the coffers of their clubs.

In the age of the Bosman free transfer, the players at the top end of the soccer scale hold the whip hand.

They know that, with the game awash with mindboggling sums of TV money, they can - in some cases - command far more in a day than people in other walks of life earn in a year.

England defender Sol Campbell, who made a Bosman move from Tottenham to North London rivals Arsenal in the summer, is picking up £100,000-a-week - or £20,000-a-day for an average five-day working week.

It is no coincidence that, as TV money goes up, so do many players' wages to obscene levels.

That is why the stance the PFA are taking smacks of biting the hand that feeds.

Wise old sage Bobby Robson spoke sense this week when he urged players to pull back from the brink and get round the negotiating table to thrash out an agreement with their paymasters.

The Newcastle United manager, like many of us, can see the wider ramifications of an industrial dispute. As well as TV, the fans are football's lifeblood and a strike, as Robson rightly says, threatens the goodwill that the game enjoys from Joe Public - the paying customer who is contributing his own share of hard-earned cash to players' salaries.

At a time when the world is facing its biggest crisis for around 40 years, and economic meltdown is jeopardising the jobs of millions, the last thing people want to hear is well-heeled footballers bemoaning their lot.

Part of the answer to all this could lie in the hands of the players themselves, if they are willing to give something back to the game that has made them and look after their less fortunate brethren.

It is an anomaly of staggering proportions that the annual PFA membership subscription is a mere £75. As a member of the National Union of Journalists working on a regional newspaper, I pay £11.11 per month, making my yearly contribution £133.32 - 44 per cent more than it costs to be a member of the PFA.

If the players' union members did the decent thing and agreed only an average tenfold increase in subscriptions - £750 - it would provide £2.625m for the deserving cases they are trying to serve.

That, at least, would be a start.