TOOK the weekend off, man, to get over the death of Timothy Leary. In honour of the great man, I turned on, tuned in, etc in front of Sunday afternoon's sport.

The absence of mind expanding drugs greatly inhibited my enjoyment of the Tyrone Fermanagh match (in narcotic terms, an anaesthetic) although the effect Art McRory's hat would have had on me had I dropped a few tabs of acid is best not thought of but, anyway, I managed frame a few `spacey' contemplations.

Television. Why does it seem to suit soccer so much better than it suits Gaelic games? Maybe at the weekend, it was just to do with not being sure how the soccer matches were going to turn out, but in general, the question is one which vexes the GAA.

It straddles the divide between conservative and reformer the former believe there's a conspiracy by RTE not to recognise the GAA's importance, whereas the latter are convinced that if the product is started up, television will transform public interest.

Transform it into what? The answer to that is bound up in certain perceptions of the role of Sky Sports. The satellite station is seen as having rained down soccer on the nation and immeasurably enhanced the game's standing.

Such slick marketing and packaging of heroes, the line runs, would give football and hurling a similar impact. Unfortunately, as things stand, that's not true.

For a start, the interest in English soccer isn't merely brought about by gimmickry. Sky didn't pay £743 million for a product whose success is a triumph of marketing over substance, but rather for something that interests people. How it interests people is the lesson for the GAA.

The difference between the products English Premiership and GAA championship is that in any season, one gives each competing team 38 matches whereas the other can guarantee no more than one. A season of the former lasts nine months for all teams the latter lasts four months for some and a week for others.

A marketing plan complete with relentless promotion and the creation of private dramas against the backdrop of a developing competition becomes fairly tricky in the context of a GAA season.

In terms of generating and exploiting a consuming interest amongst a wide range of supporters on a week in, week out basis, it is impossible.

Making the most of allegiances is a fairly obvious way of promoting the game, yet at this stage, a month into the football championship, one third of the teams have been eliminated. This is a disaster for a sport in which interest is so localised. How deep an interest would there have been down around Limerick (football team eliminated on May 12th) in the doings of Tyrone and Fermanagh?

Another gripe with RTE is that prominent footballers and hurlers seldom get the star treatment that comes naturally to every two bit soccer celebrity. Again, the answer comes back to the door of Croke Park.

Leaving aside the fact that the GAA can't compete with the public frenzy that attends international sport, the fact remains that there are a number of soccer internationals every year and the players, already well known, come into a sharp focus for that period.

IN contrast, look at the GAA championships and the way they treat potential stars. Two years ago Anthony Tohill, many people's idea of the most complete footballer in Ireland, and his Derry pals then All Ireland champions were put out of the championship before the end of May.

The following season, Mickey Linden, 1994's footballer of the year, James McCartan and their. Down colleagues suffered the same fate. This year, the hurlers of Cork went by the same stage and Kilkenny's followed them a week later. It's rather hard to treat them as celebrities when their own organisation dismantles their platform for celebrity.

In other words, to replicate the promotional value soccer gets out of television, the League and championship should run in tandem to at least some extent, and League activity should be within 16 team divisions to guarantee sustained exposure for all teams.

Knockout competition exists in soccer, but runs parallel to the main business of the season. The FA Cup is valued for its tradition and the pomp and ceremony of the final. But within the game it's quite often a spot prize for teams that never came near winning their league.

It's a feature of amateur games that the knockout competition is valued more highly than the league and vice versa in the professional world. This is for an obvious commercial reason professional games need guaranteed revenue.

Example rugby. The game had already abandoned amateurism de facto if not de jure by the time a proper league structure was established. The AIL reflected the direction of the game and the once all important provincial cups became end of season diversions.

Now, what chance is there that the GAA can compete on this kind of a level? Look at the outcry that greeted the comparatively mild rescheduling of the National Hurling League and the championship reforms (themselves aimed primarily at providing more matches). Clubs and provincial councils are hardly going to entertain for a moment such further complication of their lives.

Neither does it stop there. To maximise the impact of broadcasting, the broadcaster has to be become centrally involved in the planning of fixtures. The English Football Association have effectively allowed Sky to pick its live matches with far more flexibility and influence on the fixtures list than even the most sanguine visionary could imagine ever being granted by the GAA.

Say, for an unlikely instance, Sky did pick up the rights to GAA championship matches. Does anyone not chewing peyote think that Fermanagh and Tyrone would have been inflicted on the viewing public? No, because the broadcaster would have ruled it out and brought back Wexford Kilkenny or something like that.

Sky would certainly push an open draw for the championship in order to create something of the excitement associated with knockout competition, something sadly lacking in the vast majority of first round football matches.

Such things are not going to happen in the world of the championship. Croke Park had to drag RTE executives around the country, to give the provincial councils some idea of the broadcaster's difficulty in presenting games, before the season's schedule evolved to the limited extent it has.

It's very hard to be confidently directive on this, but if the GAA are going to maximise the impact of its games through the use of television, the product (the main competitions and their organisation) is going to have to change radically.

If that's too lumpy a pill to swallow, so be it. But there's no point in complaining about Sky and soccer unless one is prepared to make the same accommodations.