No amount of Thomas Hardy could have prepared either myself or the GAA for the horrendous complications that would flow from the apparently harmless decision to host a few stages of the Tour de France in Ireland this summer. After all, it's not every year we have the opportunity to show off the country at its best.

From the stately Georgiana of the capital city, unhappily themed as Atlantis for Saturday's time trial - witnessed by an array of Gaels observing the traditions of Myles na Gopaleen's An Beal Bocht by bearing themselves stoically in the face of a biblical downpour - to the more recent traditions of Wicklow's tree-dwellers, the greater Dublin area's stages of the Tour were a great success.

(I know I got to see far more of Dublin than would normally be the case when travelling to Thurles. How surprisingly beautiful the Eastlink bridge is, even to someone trying to travel in a south-west direction.) And the sweep of the Tour into the south-east and beyond proved to rapt television viewers around the world that not all the good roads on the route had that suspicious, freshly-laid look.

Then there was the added macro-economic benefit of placing a brake on spending in the Dublin area on Saturday and thus bringing succour to our overheated (but still defiantly world-class) economy. In fact the encaging of cash-crazed consumers should now be considered as one of the few anti-inflationary measures still within our control when we sign up for the euro.

And yet. And yet. It's hard to be curmudgeonly about such an event but there's reason to believe that (like the very tiger economy itself) it hasn't benefited everyone. It's not clear whether international cycling regards Gaelic games as competing sports but this year's Tour has caused a fair bit of havoc for the GAA.

Some of us have been braced for the worst for quite a while. Back in October in New York during the great voyage of remembrance in honour of the Polo Grounds final, Sean McGoldrick of The Sunday World disclosed to a breakfast table of hacks and his paper's columnist Pat Spillane (look, we've eight All-Ireland medals between us) that he had secured a scoop for his employers.

Brow-beating - and the fact that his story was already on the streets - forced out the information that the scoop was to the effect that the Leinster hurling final was being brought forward because of the Tour de France, which would be occupying Dublin city on the weekend normally set aside for the former.

Later in the day when a New York woman was prevailed upon to take a photograph of the group (for reasons of expenses: `I was in America') and presumably because things in Templenoe must be a bit slow-moving, Spillane began badgering the woman as to whether she'd heard the Leinster final would have to be moved.

Anyway. The moving of the Leinster final led to the moving of the Munster final which would normally have been held last Sunday week. This set in motion a chain of events which have led to a promotional disaster for the GAA next Sunday.

The fact that the All-Ireland hurling quarterfinals are immutably fixed for Sunday week has collided with the worst-case scenario of a late-running Munster final ending in a draw to force the staging of the replay next weekend. So Clare-Waterford joins two provincial finals and the Laois-Kildare football semi-final in Leinster (another casualty of le grand boucle - it should have been replayed last Sunday) to form a ridiculously overcrowded Sunday for this time of the year.

Leave aside for a minute the daftness of a championship which takes four months to complete and yet may force a team (the Munster runners-up) to play four vital matches in five weeks and think of the bigger (or in this case, the smaller) picture.

Television has been a blessing for the GAA. It has been a particular blessing for hurling and all connected with the game. Live broadcasts have combined perfectly with some high-quality matches in the last couple of years to give the game an unprecedented profile.

That profile may not be as relevant in a GAA context, where people are familiar with the game and its merits, as it is in the wider community. Between advertising campaigns and the excitement generated by the matches shown live, hurling has attracted a whole new audience which is not well served by the match disappearing off the screen this weekend after whetting appetites everywhere three days ago. Profile aside, there is a loyal GAA audience who would like to see the match but can't as only 50,000 can attend Semple Stadium.

There are a couple of aspects to this problem. One is the mad arrangements for a typical championship where teams are either out on their ears after months of training and one match or lying idle for five weeks as a prelude to playing four high-intensity matches in the following five (potentially, Waterford).

Two is the lack of centralised flexibility in relation to the broadcasting of matches. The negotiations that finally yield up a live television schedule were probably the model for Daytona. It's a political business with some provinces more co-operative on the broadcasting issue than others. Catering for all sensibilities and balancing the desire of provinces to `showcase their product' with the human rights of a television audience is a tricky procedure.

This weekend is booked up by the Ulster and Connacht football finals. The other two matches, the Munster hurling replay and the Laois-Kildare semi-final, will attract bigger attendances but the logic goes that the Leinster match isn't a final and that Munster hurling had its day last weekend. There is some justice in all of this if the purpose is to share around the exposure between the various provinces and allow finals receive a spotlight of their own.

But the contention here is that this is not the point of live broadcasting. It's certainly not RTE's view of the matter: the station would obviously prefer to carry the match which commands most interest, the Munster replay. And it shouldn't be Croke Park's view. If promotion of the games and evangelising them to people who are not in the traditional GAA catchment is the purpose - as it should be - then it defies belief that Clare and Waterford will go about their business next week with no live television audience.

Of course Saturday should have been an option but in the words of one official from Munster that would have "belittled the Munster final". Whatever about the argument that it's unfair to make players perform twice in seven days, there is no sense in the `belittling' theory as the match would have attracted a big television viewership and would have become a national event rather than an occasion for only those lucky enough to have a ticket.

Anyone think that the fourth Dublin-Meath match in '91 was belittled?