It is a truth pretty much universally acknowledged that common sense and farsightedness do not always form a part of the staple diet of your average GAA official. The years of toil on long winter nights in cold committee rooms have produced a collection of men and women who, given the choice, will always opt for caution over imagination. Events at Croke Park last Sunday provided yet another exhibit for the scrapbook.

The eminently sensible option at the end of the drawn National League final between Derry and Meath would have been to play extra-time and that is what should have happened. Instead, both teams will be back in just under two weeks' time for a second dalliance that will not particularly appeal to either. The distance that the GAA has travelled within a few decades is there for all to see, but more often than not it is the small things that point up how far it still has to go. The devil is in the detail.

The timing of all of this could hardly be more pertinent, coming as it does just weeks after imaginative attempts to overhaul the football calendar were stymied by Congress. Despite the country-wide debate on the Football Development Committee's proposals which foreshadowed that decision, it is clear nothing of any real substance has changed. There is still a fundamental lack of clarity about how the GAA and its members view and value the National League and where it now stands in relation to its big brother, the championship.

If it is an autumn and winter competition designed to be a precursor to the summer and the championship, then the playing schedule should reflect that and the final should be resolved well in advance of the start of the provincial championships. And if the league's future is viewed as one where it runs in parallel to the knockout competition, then so be it and we should look at planning games accordingly right through the spring and summer.

But what we have at present is very much the worst of both possible worlds. Perspectives and strategies are confused because the five or six counties at the top of the GAA tree are not totally convinced by the merits of actually winning the National League. This is the wholly invidious position in which Gaelic football's supposedly second major honour finds itself.

The status quo serves nobody well but in this particular situation it is Derry who will be most affected in the short term. With last Sunday already behind them, Cavan lie in wait in the Ulster championship minefields next weekend and six days later it's back to Croke Park for the National League final take two. That makes three games in 13 days and if events transpire against them it is not inconceivable that Derry's football year could be over before we even reach June. For a county with genuine aspirations of success at national level and which gears its preparations throughout the winter accordingly, this is a disastrously poor way to do business.

The way in which Derry now regroup and refocus over the next fortnight could have a pivotal impact on Ulster GAA fortunes for the rest of the summer. By common consensus they are at present some way ahead of the rest in the province and on everything we have seen so far represent Ulster's best chance of clawing back some of the ground lost since the golden years of 1991-'94. Two interlinked elements have been central to the county's re-emergence.

The first has been the great renaissance of Anthony Tohill. In the early part of the last decade he was imperious and by some distance the pre-eminent player in this province. He set down a marker with an All-Ireland minor medal in 1989 and in the years that followed matured into first a half forward and then a midfielder of substance and genuine class. Tohill also oozed that rarest of commodities - star quality - which usually manifested itself in a seemingly effortless ability to alter the course of events and win matches when many of those around him were floundering.

But as the highwater mark of Derry's 1993 All-Ireland win receded, Tohill's career entered a period of relative decline. Now solidly berthed at midfield he was still a dominating presence under a breaking ball but his contributions to his county's cause were more often workmanlike than spectacular.

In retrospect, it is clear it took him some time to adjust to the retirement of Brian McGilligan, his midfield partner throughout all the good times. McGilligan's insatiable appetite for hard, back-breaking work had freed his more junior team-mate for the showmanship and the heroics. Following McGilligan's departure, Tohill had to rethink his approach to the game and take on board more of those mundane but essential midfield tasks.

That adaptation has taken a few years but on the evidence of this year's league campaign the new-look Tohill appears very close to completion. Even before last Sunday's game he had been making more of those ranging runs forward from midfield that had been a characteristic of all his best days in a Derry jersey.

But this return to his peerless best and the corresponding upturn in Derry's fortunes has not happened in a vacuum. Standing four-square at the centre of it all has been the imperious presence of the little general, Eamonn Coleman. During the Brian Mullins years Derry were a competent but joyless outfit and performed as if constrained by their manager's diffident personality. Tohill and everyone else around him played football that was careworn and laced with a suspicion of the outside world.

The return of Coleman has swept all that away. Last year, in tandem with Adrian McGuckian, he cautiously tested the waters but now that he is in sole charge this year the All-Ireland winning manager of 1993 has dived right in. During any of the more "manly" exchanges last Sunday he was a conspicuous figure in his dark Hollywood-style sunglasses, Ballyronan's answer to Danny deVito. Coleman's handprints were also all over Derry's tactics, with the long high balls pumped in to keep the vaunted Meath full-back line pinned in their own territory as much as possible. But for one error by his son Gary, it might all have paid rich dividends.

His mischievous installation of Cavan as favourites for next Sunday's championship opener was trademark Coleman, reminiscent of 1993. And we all know how that summer ended.