LockerRoom: People outside of the GAA never really understand the charm of the drawn championship game. They tend to discuss the phenomenon of tied summer games in way that they might discuss the quality of snake oil available from snake-oil salesmen.

A draw, eh? Veh-ery nice for the gah crowd certainly. Veh-ery convenient for the grab-all association.

Of course people outside of the GAA are usually handicapped either by a tragic indifference to all sports or by a crude prejudice against the GAA. Either way they are more to be pitied than laughed at and we should teach our children to be nice to them but to avoid them in wedlock.

For the rest of us, blessed that we are, we know that a little bit of the summer dies when your county team goes out of the championship. Even when your county team is so poor or so abject that it would be a relief, a happy release, to see their summer safely interred, a draw proffers all manner of false hopes. Miracle cure! Maybe the hoors aren't that bad. Maybe what's out there is worse. If they got out of the replay and got a bit of a gallop going . . .

And for serious counties the draw is a sentence commuted. A draw is a governor's pardon. It's remission. Reality postponed. A draw is almost by definition exciting. A draw is, we'll meet again, the oul gah will decide where, the oul gah will decide when.

On Saturday in Croker, Dublin and Tyrone managed one of those happy draws, giving each other a second chance and presenting us all with a sequel to the best football games of the year. It seemed meet and fair.

Dublin had been good value for their five-point half-time lead. Tyrone bossed the second half and Dublin scored just twice from play after they'd had their cappuccinos at half-time.

Even Tyrone fans, a frighteningly intense and largely humourless bunch who have had more than their share of draws this summer, weren't disappointed. They'd been the ones caught at the finishing tape but in the second half Mickey Harte had put right a whole lot that has been wrong with Tyrone for most of the summer. Other things had just corrected themselves.

Seán Cavanagh had become readable at midfield and Conor Gormley had never become comfortable there. Joe McMahon, who was unlucky to be dropped after the Monaghan game, came on and threw a fire blanket over Ciarán Whelan.

Gormley moved to pilot the defence. Not only did he look a whole deal happier there but he made Tyrone much, much better.

Cavanagh became part of an attack which was suddenly putting intense pressure on the Dublin half-back line. Brian McGuigan got stronger and stronger.

Peter Canavan came on and Owen Mulligan looked twice as good a player as he looks when his old schoolteacher isn't on the field. Dubs fixed by Canavan's presence enthusiastically bought two Mulligan dummies as he soloed through for a fine goal with Canavan running decoy to his left.

And Brian Dooher, having his best game in some time anyway, clipped a wonderful point from under the Hogan Stand in the second half, a crushing reminder to the blue masses of what a class outfit Tyrone can be.

Therein lies the beauty of the drawn game, something beyond the superficial. Which side will learn the most and which side will think about it all a little bit too much in the next couple of weeks?

Ostensibly Tyrone found fissures and cracks in the Dublin team and poured through them.

Everything shifts and changes though. Half of the Dublin defence had bad days on Saturday and the half-back line seemed to lack the muscle for the battle in the second half. Dublin's changes late in the game (the introductions of Darren Magee and Dessie Farrell) were interesting though.

For different reasons both players have returned to the panel relatively recently but they represent the best experience available on the subs' bench.

When Dublin came out onto the field three-quarters of an hour before game time and velcroed themselves into a big huddle it was Dessie Farrell who spent a lot of time in the centre of that circle talking and cajoling.

The betting is that Dublin will ask for more than a good speech and 120 seconds of football from Dessie the next day. You know too that he'll be dying to get in there at some stage.

And Magee opens up possibilities. It was widely expected on Saturday that Shane Ryan would mark Seán Cavanagh but Pillar Caffrey pulled something of a coup by allowing Ciarán Whelan to take Cavanagh. For 35 minutes it paid off, but for the second half Whelan looked drained and Magee, were it not for the delicate politics of playing erstwhile tourists, would have been introduced earlier than he was.

And what of Whelan? Can anybody explain? Every Dublin midfielder since 1983 has suffered for not being Brian Mullins. Nearly a quarter of a century on, we're coming to appreciate that there won't be another Mullins.

But for patches in the first half on Saturday, Whelan did the sort of impersonation that brought tears to the eyes. He made the sort of catches you don't see any more. Then he got beamed up or something.

Having blooded Magee though, all the Dublin inhibitions are gone and possibilities open up for Dublin. Move Shane Ryan into the half-back line, where his strength would be a bulwark and where his ability to find a man with a handpass might spare the Hill the gruesome spectacle of some of Shane's errant kicking. Or move Magee to wing forward, where Collie Moran has been struggling.

So it goes. Will Tyrone leave Gormley at number six? If they do, Bryan Cullen looks a stronger presence at centre forward for the Dubs. But his strength makes him an interesting contender for a return to the centre-back spot.

Dublin keep warming Mark Vaughan up but can't make up their minds as to whether he'd set the place on fire or self-immolate.

Can Tyrone squeeze 70 minutes out of Peter Canavan? Will that automatically mean 70 minutes out of Owen Mulligan? Will Ryan Mellon get another start? Gavin Devlin must feel vulnerable having been taken off at half-time on Saturday.

And what are we to think of the fitness issue? Tyrone, who should be jaded and sick of the sight of each other and their Dublin hotel rooms, looked to have more running and more intensity in the second half on Saturday.

They were playing their seventh game of the season. Dublin had been having pedicures and massages for a month.

Maybe it's all about games, games and more games. There's certainly a level teams can get to in a season and there's certainly a point at which nothing more can be got from them.

Tyrone are in the business of maintaining one and avoiding the other. Dublin will feel they are still on the way up.

Drawn games keep the conversation coursing through the veins of the GAA. Two weeks of speculation and rumour and oul talk. The demise of summer postponed.

Not bad.