TV View: "It's not a North-South thing," as Tyrone man Kevin McAleer so generously put it on RTÉ's Up for the Match on Saturday night. "Sure we're all the same - it's six of one and 26 of the others," he grinned, writes Mary Hannigan.

The Tyrone men and women in the Montrose audience applauded enthusiastically, as did their Armagh counterparts, until McAleer admitted that he thought last year's "Welcome Home Sam" banners in their county were greetings for a Loyalist prisoner on early release.

At which point Armagh stopped clapping.

The rest of us, though, were magnanimously invited to the All-Ulster party, hosted by Croke Park yesterday, despite the stirring of some bad "South v Them Up There" blood in the past month or five.

As the Bard of Tyrone, Patsy O'Hagan, put it on BBC Northern Ireland yesterday: "Now certain folk down South don't like us. They say our game is dour. 'Well boys', I say, 'don't ate the grapes if you find they're sour'. "

Which brings us to Colm O'Rourke.

"Will he have to eat his hat?" asked Michael Lyster, as he introduced RTÉ's coverage of The Big Day. Tape mischievously rewound: "Tyrone have a lot of bad players. Brian Dooher is a bad player. I have a very expensive hat and I will eat it on this show if Tyrone win an All-Ireland and Brian Dooher is on the team," as O'Rourke proclaimed earlier in the summer.

Back live, Lyster and Joe Brolly offered O'Rourke his choice of post-match menus, just in case. Brolly produced a straw Panama hat.

"With the sort of stomach O'Rourke has he could probably digest it," he said. But O'Rourke laughed it off, confidently predicting an Armagh two-in-a-row.

After all, as the Bard of Tyrone lyrically waxed: "The child of Prague is on the doorstep, in the hope it will stay dry, and the red and white of auld Tyrone, just flutters in the sky."

And that's, kind of, what O'Rourke predicted they would do: flutter like a butterfly, but leave the stinging to Armagh.

"What have Sinn Féin and Tyrone got in common?" he chuckled, quoting a joke Brolly had told him off-camera. "Sinn Féin have a better chance of seeing an All-Ireland."

Similar confidence in an Armagh triumph was to be found in a school in Ballyhegan when RTÉ dropped in. "What is Armagh's biggest strength and biggest weakness?" Marty Morrissey asked young Conor Williamson. "They don't have a weakness and the biggest strength is the whole team," he replied, doing a mighty fine Joe Kernan impression.

"Why did they lose to Monaghan, then?" Marty retorted. "They were trying to lose, so they'd get through the back door easier," said Conor, stony-faced.

If Big Joe wants a break from it all Little Conor is, clearly, ready to pick up the reins.

The only Ballyhegan pupil in two minds was Aoibhín McNeill, whose ma is from Tyrone and da is from Armagh.

"Who will you support?" asked Marty. "Whoever's winning," said Aoibhín. Trust us, this girl will go far.

Back in the RTÉ studio all three panellists - O'Rourke, Brolly and Jimmy Tarbuck (aka Pat Spillane) - were tipping Dublin to beat Laois in the minor final. They were spot on - the Dubs won by 1-11 to 1-11. Alright, alright, be finicky and pedantic: it was a draw.

The senior final?

"I've puked after beer, but that doesn't say I've lost my liking for beer," said Spillane who, and, honest, this couch doesn't want to be unkind, has given the impression all summer that every line he has uttered on RTÉ has been so rehearsed you got the feeling he spoke to his mirror for much of the night before.

The match? Well, not tremendously pretty, but we had been warned. Martin McHugh almost apologised on the BBC, but drew back just in time: after all, as he said, "A lot of Tyrone people will die happy now."

"It'll change our lives forever, today we're made men," as Tyrone's John Devine told the BBC. Peter Canavan lifted Sam and delivered a speech almost as long as Tyrone's wait for an All-Ireland title, but who's complaining? He'd waited long enough for the moment.

As had O'Rourke. "The agony, the ecstasy and the difficulty of eating a straw hat," as Lyster said at full-time. O'Rourke gulped. That straw Panama hat looked a bit indigestible. But probably less so than the all-encompassing triumph of Ulster football (and Brian Dooher) this Championship year. Swallow hard Colm, swallow hard. Like the rest of us.