Sport the great leveller. One day you're there enthralling a global audience, doing your bit for the small nation that never knew defeat; the next you're being dragooned into providing promotional opportunities for Louis Walsh's bands in a sealed-off park. A homecoming fit for heroes!

Having broached the subject of the GAA and the World Cup only recently, I didn't expect to be returning to it this quickly. But then again, certain conclusions drawn a couple of weeks ago have been undermined.

Identifying a "live and let live" attitude within the GAA towards the soccer team's performances in Asia may have been premature. It certainly didn't reckon on the fiasco in Ulster at the weekend.

In Killarney things were bad enough. The foul weather and the unfolding drama on the television were sufficient to knock nearly a third off the regular attendance at Cork-Kerry matches. Had Ireland won, the buzz in the bars around the town would have been infinitely more attractive than the driving rain and, to that extent, the turnout could have been worse. In fact, in the circumstances, 30,000 was impressive.

Now, when something as overpowering in sporting terms as Ireland contesting a knock-out match at a tournament occurs, there's not much the GAA can do about it. In general they try to avoid direct clashes, although that hasn't always been done, but the championships have to be played.

There is no way of avoiding the World Cup or its impact on the sporting public when Ireland qualify. Even when there aren't direct clashes the public mood is distracted and seemingly unable to focus on what's going on in other sports. This leads to an overall drop in attendances anyway.

Within the GAA's higher councils there is an acceptance that they grin and bear it for the month or so in question and things return to normality thereafter. And that is largely what has happened.

But what took place in Ulster was something else entirely. On The Sunday Game match analyst Martin Carney made the point during the provincial semi-final that the action of the Ulster Council in not changing the starting time penalised no one more than GAA people in Derry and Donegal.

Because the thrust of what was written here a couple of weeks ago is substantially true. Amongst the GAA membership - as amongst the sports public at large - there is a large range of sporting enthusiasms. Look at the crowds attending Munster hurling matches and Munster rugby matches and there will be large numbers in common. The same applies to Ireland soccer matches and GAA championship fixtures in general.

Allowing a clash to develop between Sunday's Ireland-Spain match and the Derry-Donegal semi-final was forcing a lot of genuine GAA supporters into an impossible position. The possibility of an overlap was always there and it was more than a possibility when the travelling distances involved were taken into account.

Disregard for its football supporters is not an admirable trait for the Ulster Council to exhibit, but at least it is a vaguely internal matter. What is of wider concern to the GAA is the disrepute with which it has been threatened by one of its units.

We all know that the GAA in Ulster is a different and more complex entity than what is largely a sports organisation in the other provinces. This was recognised in the veto the province was allowed hold over the abolition of Rule 21 - something that had to be skilfully defused by president Seán McCague.

But there comes a stage where the tomfoolery has to stop. Few people are in any doubt that a tone of cultural superiority is a contributory factor to the attitude of the Ulster Council towards soccer. This was captured in the depressing vignette of a GAA official in the press box berating a journalist for watching the Ireland match on a portable television.

That the match wasn't moved hit supporters of Derry and Donegal by giving them Hobson's choice. The decision also treated the players appallingly by subjecting two of the better counties in the championship to a match atmosphere generated by hundreds rather than thousands of supporters.

The image of the teams parading before almost empty terracing was captured by a striking photograph in Monday's Irish News. Also carried in that paper yesterday was the response of the Ulster Council to a disappointed Derry supporter who had travelled over from England for the Clones match and found himself unable to watch it and the World Cup.

"We don't regret anything that happened . . . And fans that are coming over from England should have known what time the match was starting at - that is their problem," said a spokesperson.

It may be a tall order, but Croke Park has to tackle the situation in which the Ulster Council - or any other unit - for its own obscure and unrepresentative reasons can embarrass the whole GAA.

Otherwise we are left with an image of the drenched, largely uninhabited confines of St Tiernach's Park last Sunday and the Ulster GAA symbolically carrying on as usual with the country's - and the world's - attention elsewhere.

The contrast with this weekend couldn't be more striking. On Sunday the resplendent new Croke Park opens for the first time. A week apart but on different planets.

It was a fortnight before the All-Ireland football final in 1996. After the Meath media night, some hacks gathered in a local saloon bar. The conversation was centring on the potential influence of Sigerson Cup players on the coming match.

A large, bearded individual in the company suddenly declaimed, apparently apropos nothing: "I've heard enough about Meath. We're going to beat them and I'll tell you how. By giving it to them the way they don't like it."

It was my first meeting with Willie McNeely, who passed away last week. Known as The Shoe for reasons I never had satisfactorily explained to me, he was a broadcaster back then with Castlebar Community Radio but later with Mid West Radio.

There were to be a further encounters in the years that followed, often on his radio programme. In consideration of the appearance a lusty encomium on your personal virtues and those of your newspaper would be broadcast to the people of Mayo.

When the bush telegraph twitched with news of his latest scrapes and escapades you'd shake your head and smile. Even the sadly premature news of his recovery from serious illness seemed in keeping with the colourful personality.

Leaving Tuam Stadium after Mayo had toppled All-Ireland champions Galway in 1999, I remember the voice booming out of the MWR van. The programme was running late and it was time to sign off. "Lookit we're gone the time. The Shoe has overshot the runway . . "

May he land safely.