Scuttled up the road to Clones yesterday for another Ulster football final. Wondered along the way how many more Ulster finals there would be. Of all the events which are memorialised and talked up in our sporting culture, the Ulster football final is probably the most distinctive, the most underrated and the most true to itself. Hopefully, when time comes to change the structure of the championships again, we can devise a way of keeping the best of the old stuff with the thrill of the new. It used to be known as the pullers and draggers big day out, and if that was a little harsh it still isn't the Bolshoi ballet out there.

Munster hurling finals, measured on a £for £basis, certainly have more colour and beauty to them, so much so that they have almost self-consciously become pageants. Leinster hurling finals are entering a phase of unrivalled monotony. If Kilkenny don't win every year for the next 10 years, well, Kilkenny are doing something wrong.

And Leinster football is almost arthritic in its progress. A province with so many football counties within its boundaries shouldn't have to wait so long for Laois or Westmeath or Wicklow to make an impact. In Connacht, there's a flavour to the provincial football final, but it's not as sharp and pure as that in Ulster.

In Clones, the cars begin pouring in from early morning, narrowing the streets like fat congealing in arteries. There is a great brigade of yellow-jacketed policemen deployed just to keep the traffic in order. Approaching early, the great challenge for the journalist is to blag, spoof and wheedle his or her way past 12 checkpoints and down the little backland which leads to the carpark at the ground. This is a high stakes game involving a series of lies ("The garda at the Last Checkpoint told me to come through here and down there"; "They ask me to pick up the credentials at the ground and of course the car park pass is with them"; "I'm unable to walk."). At each checkpoint things get a little bit more desperate. It's either that, or go back to Castleblayney, where you saw the last available parking spot.

There is good, nay, heroic drinking done in the town before and often after the throw-in. From the Tower to the Busted Sofa the pubs can't keep the alcohol pumped into the afficionados quick enough. Part of Ulster final day lore is the tale of some group or other who had tickets but stayed in the pub anyway because the crack was so good.

The ground itself has changed in recent years, with a dinky new stand springing up on the one side and the great grass bank on the other being made over with terraces and seats. As such, it's not the sight it once was but it's an improvement.

The character comes from the history, I suppose. Apart from the heightened sense of cultural importance Gaelic games have for Ulster people, there is a kind of familial closeness between them all. Alone of all the provinces they fight their battles and then get together behind whoever won. And for many years, apart from those crazy years from 1991 through to 1994, getting together behind whoever wins out in Ulster has meant supporting the poor relations. Generally, once the great Cavan and Down days ended, the Ulster champions went south to Croke Park as fodder for the semi-finals. The only hope they had of reaching a final was in the years when they met the Connacht champions in the semi-finals. Those times were just defeat deferred.

There is a charming insularity as well to the atmosphere which attends these occasions. If you are from Dublin you are an outsider. Not only do you see the same people at the final every year, but they always seem surprised to see you there.

The Irish Times, in particular, is a complete bafflement to them. You might as well be from France Football. I remember covering maybe my seventh or eighth final in a row a few years ago, and they had a new Max Clifford type on the press box door. He demanded to see proof of identity. This produced, his eyes lit up in the spirit of ecumenism.

"The Irish Times. Well - I - see," he said slowly, as if there were a language barrier between us. "Well, you are very welcome here." "Thank you." "I'll show you to your seat, and from there" - he waves an arm expansively - "you'll be able to see the game. If you have any questions you can ask me." "Right so." "And afterwards if you want to meet any of the players, ask them about their game, the other journalists will be going down to the dressing-room area. You can follow them." "Thanks very much."

And off he goes. See yon boy? From The Irish Times. What'd ye make of that?

THERE is a certain level of expertise required for attendance at Ulster club finals. The only reason to ask your neighbour who's playing right half forward is so that you can subsequently explain your bafflement by saying, but he was a wing back when he played McCrory Cup in 1992, at which point you are likely to be told, aye, but his second cousins were all good forwards.

Ulster finals - provincial finals generally - are more than mere landmark fixtures in the passing of a season, they are celebrations and events in themselves. Yet this weekend the qualifying series games at Croke Park on Saturday virtually overshadowed everything else. There was such novelty in seeing Armagh and Galway pick themselves up yet again for another big game. And then Kildare and Sligo, who in the normal run of things would never meet in championship were we to play from now till eternity.

So it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that if a new structure were to come into place which replaced the provincial finals with a series of round robins, followed by an open draw, that it would be no time at all before we ceased to miss the provinces and their clammy familiarity, that a big quarter-final game between Derry and Kildare would be just as attractive to people as anything that went before.

Yet it would be nice if a new system could still incorporate the provincial element, especially in football (hurling, with five of the country's best six teams in Munster, has different problems.) After all, the precept that all GAA is local is what the association is founded on. And The Irish Times is just getting the hang of the game.