First of all, a caveat to much of what follows. Public opinion polls, according even to those involved in the business, can be notoriously fickle creatures. The problem is that many of those surveyed give the responses they feel are expected of them, rather than what they actually think about the particular issue.

That is why, for example, people will say they are avidly watching current affairs programmes like Panorama or Prime Time when in fact they are sprawled across the sofa engrossed in Home and Away or Glenroe. It is also why they will also happily say that taxes should be higher to pay for improved health care, but then run a mile from any political party that is foolish enough to make that its policy.

All that said, there is much to mull over and digest from the "Survey of the Public's Attitudes to Sport and Physical Activities in Northern Ireland", the findings of which were published here last week. This snapshot of public opinion, commissioned by the Sports Council of Northern Ireland, manages the hardly insurmountable task of being more interesting than its title sounds, and it touches on all sorts of things which will have a shaping influence on the future of Northern sport.

Just over 1,000 people, representative of the age, gender, marital status and religion of the population across the North, were quizzed on everything from playing the National Lottery to drug abuse in local sport.

Predictably, some of the findings about the support patterns for football and rugby teams have provoked some pretty hysterical reactions. More of those later, but there is a wealth of other detail that has been lost in the journalistic rush to wring hands and bemoan the sporting sectarian divisions that are so much an acknowledged fact of life for everyone here.

One of the aims of the survey was to test attitudes towards National Lottery funding of sport, and the Sports Council will no doubt have been heartened to find that 62 per cent of respondents were aware that Lottery money did go to fund sport and that only four per cent were opposed to the money being used in that way. In a political climate where the squeeze on sports funding and on provisions made for development programmes is bound to intensify, this represents some much-needed statistical ammunition for the administrators.

Attitudes towards the GAA were also widely canvassed. This could hardly be more pertinent, because, as the procrastination rumbles on about Rule 21 (the rule banning members of the Northern security forces), public funding of Gaelic football and hurling is likely to become a big issue as post-Devolution realpolitik starts to kick in. Interestingly, after some deliberation, opinions on the merits or otherwise of Rule 21 were not sought - wouldn't that have stoked up the fires in the run-up to annual Congress?

There is good news for the Ulster Council of the GAA in these findings. Only seven per cent felt the association should not receive public funding, leaving its disapproval rating trailing far behind the figure of 18 per cent for pigeon racing, a sport, which for some reason seems to have incurred public ire. Read another way, 93 per cent of people, across both communities, seem content to have public money spent on ground improvements and better facilities for the most popular spectator sport here.

Attitudes are less positive as far as the GAA's cultural impact is concerned: 27 per cent believe Gaelic football reinforced divisions between the communities, while 15 per cent feel hurling is similarly divisive.

Pigeon racing's status as a great healer of sectarian strife is, unfortunately, not recorded, but soccer, boxing and rugby score best as those sports perceived as building bridges. Of these, boxing is perhaps the most significant as it is the only Northern sport that can realistically claim to be wholly integrated.

Without making too many wild extrapolations, then, it would appear that the GAA is not ploughing as lone a furrow as political or media opinion would have us believe. There are statistical indications of wariness and scepticism, but these are far outweighed by a general sense of goodwill towards Gaelic football and hurling.

Despite those GAA findings, the picture the survey paints is not all hands-across-the-divide sweetness and light. Even though rugby, boxing and hockey operate on an all-Ireland basis, 27 per cent of respondents objected to Lottery funding going to support all-island sporting facilities. Protestants were three times more likely than Catholics to hold this view. Add to this the finding that only 54 per cent of Protestants (compared to 65 per cent of Catholics) would support the Ireland rugby team in a World Cup and rugby's recent unquestioned status as the great cross-community sport looks a little shaky. The perceived post-European Cup wisdom was that rugby was the one game that could "bring people together". The survey does not destroy that view, but it does indicate that the real-life situation is more complex. Support for the Ulster rugby team does not necessarily translate into support for Ireland, and vice versa.

There is little solace for the Irish League or the IFA. Football's endemic problems colour many of the responses. One third of people felt that travel to sporting venues was affected by the political situation here, which is a clear reflection of the inability of certain supporters to travel into particular areas to watch Irish League matches. Sixty-six per cent believed spectator violence was a problem, up almost 30 per cent on five years ago. One half of all respondents mentioned sectarian singing and chanting as the most divisive rituals associated with sport here.

Any optimistic reading of sport as a potential healing force is diminished by the figures for international football allegiances in both communities. In a World Cup for which both qualified, only 19 per cent of Catholics would support Northern Ireland, compared to 39 per cent of Protestants. The Republic would attract the attention of 30 per cent of Catholics, but only a miserly eight per cent of Protestants.

The same pattern is repeated with the Olympic Games: over half of Catholics would support Irish competitors, but only 17 per cent of Protestants would follow suit.

All in all, there is much to be disheartened about in the survey. It reinforces what most here already know: that sport's divisions are a mirror image of those in the wider society.

But if the poll has served only one purpose, that has been to highlight the fact that the bigger picture is more complex. There are some stereotypes, but there is also an obvious willingness to mix and match views on various issues and move beyond some of the old enmities. The challenge for the Sports Council and everyone else who cares about sport here is to find a way of harvesting something positive from all that diversity.