NOTHING, it seems, is ever unmitigatedly good news for the GAA. Even as the tills are set to ring merrily with the receipts for next Sunday's All Ireland football final replay, the land has been filled with laments from various quarters. As is usually the case with matters affecting the GAA, these laments range from the justifiable to the spurious.

First, it is necessary to declare an interest. Journalists covering our national games are generally simple folk, very much in tune with nature. After the heated intensity of the summer, we go all mellow in the autumn, freeze up altogether as winter begins to bite before awakening renewed in the spring.

Most of us should by now be over a week into mellowing. Instead, we continue to labour under the heat of the sun. Mayo's towns and villages may have been unhappy with the draw nine days ago - the press box was distraught as its occupants shuffled off down a two week via dolorosa.

None of this obvious distress should, however, render a journalist too inhibited - for fear of being thought compromised - to speak out boldly as an advocate for extra time in championship matches. The argument has to be ranged against a take of roughly £1.5 million for an All Ireland final replay so it needs to be compelling.

Start with the participants. Even the crowds leaving Croke Park after the Meath Mayo match were unhappy. A great feeling of anti climax permeated the aftermath. In the Burlington Hotel the following day, there was virtually no atmosphere. Not alone were players back on a leash at a function during which they would normally be cutting loose but supporters, bereft of reasons to celebrate or grieve, were also re arranging their lives to accommodate the imminent replay.

For players, the championship season is carefully calibrated so that a team will peak on the third Sunday in September. As soon as that schedule is extended by a fortnight, they are into the unknown. Minds must be refocused and bodies retuned. No one subject to a sustained regimen of systematic activity cares particularly for that sort of surprise.

Once back in training, good managers will coax the extra work out of players but it is difficult for amateurs who have been drawing mainly on their spare time and energies to suppress feelings of disappointment and return to the grind.

The managers charged with extracting this extra effort have themselves put in enormous commitment, usually far greater than even the players, and have to pick themselves up, present unflustered appearances to the world and again motivate the players.

Of course, replays will be necessary; no one would seriously resort to penalty kicks or some other bloodlessly ersatz means of settling intractable draws. But they should be a last resort, a fair bit further down than the line than they are at present. Extra time should be played to give the players and teams every chance of concluding the matter on the day.

It can be argued that the additional half hour is unfair for the very reason that the players are amateurs who shouldn't be subject to unreasonable demands. Extra time, however, is used in replays by which stage players are presumably even more worn out than on the day of the drawn match.

Teams may prefer to draw rather than lose but one of them is going to lose and it's probable that either would prefer to go down on the first day instead of waiting another couple of weeks to do so.

Of the other participants, the referee is the most maligned. Why exactly Pat McEnaney chose to blow up the drawn match with about a couple of minutes to go is anyone's guess but a desire to create a windfall for Croke Park is unlikely to have been a priority.

In Saturday's Irish Times, Tommy Sugrue, the Kerry referee who took charge of the previous drawn All Ireland final in 1988, made an eloquent case for the whole replay experience being particularly stressful for the referee. It's not as if the match officials are put on a percentage and Sugrue himself was at the time reported to have been turned down for two All Ireland tickets 12 months after he took the final to a second match. If referees blanch a little at the prospect of going again, the tormented officials in Croke Park, similarly not on a draw bonus, dread the prospect. Other administrators throughout the association have to pick up the pieces when a replay invades the calendar.

The women's football final was the first casualty and well publicised as such. At least the organisers in this case were aware that a men's replay would dislodge them from that date but elsewhere, county championships are put on hold and other activities are inconvenienced.

For example, next weekend was to have seen this year's hurling shinty internationals in Ennis. In its fourth year, this annual meeting of Scotland's shinty players and Ireland's hurlers, at under 21 and senior level, has been a very worthwhile project which has been very instructive for both the GAA and the Camanachd Association.

It had been scheduled for Sunday but was moved to Saturday because of the football replay. It will, however, lose out in terms of media attention - it cannot be helped as an All Ireland final fairly sharply defines the priorities of both broadcast and print journalists.

The only big argument against giving the final every opportunity to sort itself out on the original date concerns the financial benefits to the GAG. Here it is necessary to avoid the instinctive cynicism which lurks in the interstices of the GAA and its finances.

THE money raised by Croke Park in replay receipts, say £1 million nett, will trickle down to the association's local units and benefit a wide range of members. It can be argued that the trickle down theory more than justifies inconvenience to players and administrators.

Just as the community argument is a valid rebuttal of the vague imputation that a coterie of top Croke Park officials can be facilitated in behaving like Caligula when the ticket money rolls in, so it is an argument against resorting to replays except where necessary.

The people attending All Ireland finals are largely drawn from the same clubs and committees that will benefit from trickle down funds. Putting them through the expense of buying premium tickets and funding days or weekends away a second time is actually taking with one hand and giving back with the other.

Finally, whereas the desirability of a curtain raiser before the replayed final is unarguable in terms of crowd safety dynamics, the disruption of the minor teams from Galway and Tipperary was mistaken and unfair. Shattering young teams' preparation schedules in order to arrange a conventional under card match makes no sense.

An All Ireland B championship fixture could have been fixed for Croke Park and the counties wouldn't have needed as many tickets as Tipperary and Galway - around 5,500.

All this can be remembered when organising the details of a second Meath-Mayo replay.