The Ulster Council has defended the decision to play last Saturday's Ulster final replay at Croke Park. The attendance turned out to be disappointingly down on the drawn match a fortnight previously, with the crowds halving from around 60,000 to 30,000.

There were a number of contributory factors: the natural decline in numbers between draws and replays, the fact it was on a Saturday, and travel difficulties arising from traffic congestion on the main routes into Dublin experienced before the drawn match and the cancellation of train services out of Belfast because of bomb scares on the track.

"Once we moved to Saturday the chances of a big crowd diminished but the decision was taken by the Ulster Council and we played it," according to provincial secretary Danny Murphy. "The crowd wasn't helped by the fact two special trains that had sold out were pulled at the last minute by Translink and no alternative transport was provided.

"So we were reduced to what was effectively core support. It's not just the Ulster final that suffers on Saturdays. Last year's games between Mayo and Fermanagh drew a far smaller crowd to the replay (64,519 and 39,485).

"Our view was that by taking the game to Croke Park we could accommodate everyone who wanted to get a seat, which most of Saturday's crowd did. It also meant we could sell more family tickets."

Meanwhile, Tyrone have confirmed they have no intention of objecting to the outcome of Saturday's match after referee Michael Collins admitted he had sent off Stephen O'Neill by mistake.

"We wouldn't be going down that road," according to county secretary Dominic McCaughey. "Players make mistakes, managers make mistakes and referees make mistakes. We wouldn't be making an issue out of it, referees don't go out to make mistakes on purpose."

McCaughey also confirmed Tyrone would be appealing the dismissal of Peter Canavan, shown a straight red card shortly before O'Neill.

Television pictures cast doubt on the reasons for Canavan's red card and there are hopes the player will have the punishment rescinded and be free to play in the qualifier against Monaghan on Saturday week.

Although it has been stated before that the break-even figure for Croke Park is about 32,000 at provincial final admission rates Murphy denied the council would be losing money on the venture. "I don't want to go into that but I think we'll come out on the right side when we finish."

There was controversy when Croke Park was chosen as the venue two weeks ago because last Saturday was also the date picked for any Leinster football final replay. In the event this didn't matter, as Dublin - albeit narrowly - won their provincial final against Laois.

Murphy also spoke out on the subject of criticism of the type of football played in the province. "I think a lot of the comment has been very, very unfair.

Tyrone and Armagh play a fair but physical brand of football. A lot has been made of this particular issue when similar scrutiny of other matches in other provinces might well show similar incidents.

"I think we'd settle for the year we've had. Ulster has been a very competitive championship. Maybe we had more games than we might have wanted but competition is what it's all about."

Those levels of competition have been on display in the All-Ireland qualifier series. To date this season the only Ulster county to have lost a match to opponents from outside of the province is Antrim, who were beaten by Meath in the first round.

Three of the four qualifiers going into next weekend's fourth round are from Ulster and that might have been a clean sweep had Down and Donegal not been drawn against fellow provincials Derry and Cavan, respectively.

The historical achievement of winning Ulster from the preliminary round for the first time in 60 years is slightly misleading because it is only in fairly recent times that the strongest teams have found themselves in the opening matches.

Up until the early 1980s the top teams in the province were always spared the preliminary round. But then a motion from the late Paddy Donnelly, former Fermanagh county secretary, that the draw should be opened up so the weaker counties didn't always have to play the additional match, was accepted by the Ulster Council. The situation then was based on home-and-away arrangements so teams drawn against each other in the preliminary round had two years in that situation.

Down found themselves playing in the preliminary round for four successive years in the mid-1990s, 1995-98, and to redress that situation the Ulster Council opened its draw completely and since then each year has had a new draw.

At the weekend Armagh became the first county since Cavan in 1945 - Danny Murphy was unsure as to why Cavan, the dominant team in the province during the 1930s and 1940s, were drawn in the initial round - to emerge from the preliminary round to win the Ulster title.

Joe Kernan's side were winning the county's fifth provincial title in seven years. It is 40 years since such a level of dominance has been apparent in the province. Down also won five in seven years, between 1959 and 1965, but went on to make it six out of eight in 1966. During that period they won two All-Irelands.