LOCKERROOM: A week of unbridled relief and celebration in the House of LockerRoom. The new rules are going to work after all. Having made a handsome living this past while from writing the column "that's not afraid to say nothing", LockerRoom is now required to express outrage or concern on a weekly basis.

It has been pointed out that all other columnists on this paper dutifully go about with their bonnets full of bees, that never a week goes past without the poor souls being afflicted by some sort of anguish which only 1,100 sagacious words could relieve, but that this column flagrantly persists in being one of God's little sunbeams. It's not fair, they say.

Just being the man who was "unafraid to express the thoughts that other people were too embarrassed to express two weeks ago" is no longer good enough. Blood must splatter walls.

This column must be an abattoir for other people's reputations. LockerRoom must forthwith be hard-hitting and relentless. Titter ye not.

The column you are now reading was earmarked as the first of a new era for curmudgeonliness and straight talking. From now on, no more than two columns a month will be concerned with the problems of having nothing to write a column about. The remaining output shall be snappy and angry.

If a bullet can be a weapon of mass destruction, well then small problems on the periphery of sport shall be held up to the light and made to look like threats to the wellbeing of mankind.

That was the idea, but suppose the reality let us down? What does a columnist do then when the world is sunny and the text is dreary? So, of course, we were dreading this week. Suppose no stories happened? Nothing?

Suppose it was a week that cried out and howled for a Monday morning mediation on the nature of nothingness? Or if the only sports news story which came along concerned itself with developments in the sport of fly-fishing?

This week has been a watershed though. LockerRoom is reborn. LockerRoom is baptised on the cold murky waters of controversy. Every day new column ideas have been dropping on to LockerRoom's shoulders like mannah or dandruff.

Brian Kerr is appointed, the backlash starts here. The Elland Road car boot sale, how it's good news for minorities. The national league starts under floodlights, Kerry prove themselves not to be nocturnal animals. Alex Ferguson sticks his nose into the middle of Roy Keane's international career. Dublin hurlers become more glamourous then their footballing counterparts.

Is it still reassuring for the Evening Herald to call Croke Park a "space age" stadium?

Most of these topics will have to be assimilated and drawn together to make one fast rule.

There have been few press conferences more pleasant or more fun to attend than last Tuesday's Brian Kerr inaugural. After months in which Irish and English soccer hacks have been bitterly divided over the Keane/McCarthy issue, it looks as if no end to the impasse is in sight.

The more we Irish were inclined to get up on our hind paws and applaud the new King well, the more baffled our colleagues became. They don't get the whole Brian Kerr/ Noel O'Reilly thing.

They think we've appointed Chas and Dave to look after the national side.

And in a small mean way that's been part of the pleasure in seeing the job given to the best people to do the job. There's a kind of punching the air joy to it which a lot of people outside the country will just never get.

There were a few lines in Roddy Doyle's When Brendan Met Trudy which neatly summed up the national psyche. Anne Cassin appeared on the TV screen reading the news.

She began with a few headline items which skewered us where it hurts - Irish song in UK pop charts! Top UN official says he likes Ireland! Etc.

Kerr's appointment seems to refute that system of external validation. We don't have to measure ourselves by the way in which everyone else sees us. We don't have to believe that only the brightest and the best leave the country.

We don't have to absorb the lessons of a thousand radio ads campaigns made by gits from Dublin 4 which tell us that to have a Dublin accent is to be a thicko on the make. We don't have to worry about what everyone else thinks. We don't have to depend on businesses which repatriate all their profits. We're good enough. Not in that dumb, vulgar Celtic Tiger way, but in a way that matters.

Kerr and O'Reilly bring a sense of beginning. They bring something else too - an innate understanding of how the media works and how to make it work for them. Best thing to do is treat the people who comprise the media like humans and not to take it all too seriously beyond that. The GAA could learn a lesson.

In a week where the association has launched the idea of floodlit league games and big-time events featuring the Dubs in Croke Park, we have also had the cheery announcement from the Cork hurlers and footballers that they won't be permitting media infestation of their dressingrooms after matches anymore.

This is part of a growing trend. The "whatever you say, say nothing" philosophy is increasingly popular with bankrupt managers in both codes of the game. When a manager has no ideas left he starts drawing down lists of enemies for his players.

It never works, although the Cork footballers may feel they have a long way to go before they are debilitated by the levels of paranoia which beset their rivals in Kerry. It never works and there's proof. Just about every year since we informally began keeping records on the matter, the team with the worst press relations in the weeks before an All-Ireland final loses.

Armagh are a fine example of the trend. A team composed of smart, grown up players. They have been at or around the top for nearly half a decade, yet they are open, available and accessible.

And, according to Joe Kernan, they've no intention of changing. The All-Ireland win and their subsequent enjoyment of it has been a breath of fresh air for the game.

Croke Park yesterday ultimately wasn't about the match. It was about the thousands of schoolkids who came along for free and got to sample the atmosphere. It's through schools, clubs and the media that the GAA will be able to compete for their affections.

The GAA needs stories and personalities on the back pages if it is to make things like the relaunched league work, if it is to redress the decline in championship qualifier attendances. Take a look at Big Joe. Pop along to see Brian and Noel in action. It's how confident Irish grown ups do things.

Wow, 1150 words gone and we've only cleared our throat.