Sideline Cut: The Gael is only truly happy when he is fighting with his fellow Gael. The day the Gael becomes a peaceful, sanguine fellow is the day the GAA may as well throw the towel in. Nothing beats the cut and thrust of the championship but during the long, tense build-up to that summer joust, the Gael is prepared to row with anybody over anything.

Forget about the unholy shenanigans up in Omagh a few weeks ago. Terrified and shocked as the young children of Ireland may have been by the sight their heroes tangoing in such manly fashion, at least that was an old fashioned "hould-me-back-before-I-kill-him" barney straight out of the Martin McDonagh school of theatre. The real fun and the true malevolence may be found in the GAA's more subtle rows, those that deal with fixtures and rights and wrongs and rules.

It is hard to know where to begin and, as the saying goes, Longford will do as good as any place else. The strange stand-off between the football men from the midlands county and Donegal is a weird one. Longford have no gripe with Donegal.

And the boys from Donegal have stated loud and clear they ain't got no quarrel with the Viet Long. But the governing bodies in both counties are mightily unhappy with this notion of their representative senior teams playing a league game against one another.

What appeared to be a straightforward, even humble, National Football League Division Two match is in reality a complicated and incendiary affair that may yet require the intercession of Kofi Annan. It is not too much to suggest the relations between the two counties (traditionally characterised by amicable indifference and only a vague awareness of each other's existence) will never be the same again.

When this column suggested to one distinguished Longford Gael that the situation was a bit like bringing the mountain to Mohammed, the reply was, "We have no mountains here in lovely Longford."

The scale and seriousness of the Longford-Donegal impasse (not to be confused with the recently opened bypass) would be more understandable if MacCumhaill Park was situated in Reno, Nevada, for instance, and if Longford were involved in a ground-sharing scheme which meant they played their home games at Dynamo Kiev FC. If that was the case, you could see why both counties would hold fast to the stance: have Boots, won't travel.

But the fact is that Donegal could hire the bus, journey down through fair Roscommon, play the game, enjoy a steak dinner in Boyle and still be back home to watch the sun set on Mount Errigal.

Donegal are regarded as favourites to catapult back into Division One. Becoming entangled in administrative rows could jeopardise those plans. This postponed league game is precisely the kind of GAA matter that inevitably festers into one of those feuds that last for generations. Donegal-Longford wedding plans will go bust over this. The country and western weekend in Bundoran won't be the same once the Granard Linedancers pull out. And there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of Daniel appearing in the Longford Arms any time soon.

It is a terrible thing.

The best solution would be for the GAA to determine a halfway house. Fix the game for two o'clock in Dowra and be damned. The longer this situation is allowed to continue, the less likely it becomes that either party will remember what it was about in the first place.

Already, a senior Dun na nGall official with a razor-sharp memory and a barrister's appreciation of the GAA laws and bylaws told this column on the phone that he heard the problem boiled down to "a few bucks from Longford unhappy at the state of the corn beef sandwiches we served up after a challenge game a few years back".

Other peace-brokers claim that the matter boils down to travelling expenses and gate receipts and that thorny issue of money.

"Money, it's a gas," as Roger Waters - a man often quoted at GAA congress - sang in the eponymous Pink Floyd classic. Dosh is a touchy subject among Gaels at the moment and it threatens to leave the GAA and the Gaelic Players Association completely estranged. When I see pictures of GPA leader Dessie Farrell and GAA president Seán Kelly on the news nowadays, I have an overwhelming urge to play the Cat Stevens classic, Father and Son, very loudly. That tune captures the poignancy of the situation in a way that mere explanations never can - How Can I Try to Explain, When I Do, He Turns Away Again. Indeed.

The GAA are treating the GPA like a teenager that refuses to clean up his room and the GPA is getting fed up with this. Dessie Farrell looks like the most burdened leader of men since the days when JFK was embroiled in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And it is easy to understand why. The failure of the GAA to attend Wednesday's meeting between the GPA and Sports Minister John O'Donoghue has been officially classified as a "snub".

There are few sins more unforgivable in GAA culture than a snub. A broken leg will mend. A busted nose or an auld gash to the face adds character but the snub is there forever, eating away at you. Friends taunt you with it for years. "D'ya mind the day yer man snubbed ya," they will say maliciously over a Smithwicks.

Dessie has warned that this latest no-show has incensed the players he represents.

Emergency meetings will be taking place with a view to planning a possible protest. It remains unclear as to what form that protest may take. Nothing has been ruled out or in at this stage. Which means that literally anything could happen - or nothing at all.

Meanwhile, all kinds of minor rows and skirmishes are breaking out across the land on a daily basis. Managers turn up for training only to be bundled into the dressingroom and handed, as the euphemism goes, their P45s. Which, in GAA terms, means a shoe in the backside and not so much as the price of petrol for the journey home.

Players row with managers. Players row with referees. Players converse with referees in terms that are not always flattering. Referees complain that the Gaelic games are still in the dark ages, even if they are now playing games under lights in deepest Leitrim. Players who receive suspensions for three months are back playing just a fortnight later.

On it goes, the bickering and shouting and backchat.

Sometimes, the GAA are like the classroom of sixth class lads abandoned by the teacher who had to take an urgent phone call.

It is the sound of everyone shouting, gloriously and happily at the top of their voices, and of nobody listening. And although it is an awful racket, deep down everybody is happy.