Given that the matter of Rule 21 won't arise again until GAA members in Ulster discover utopia, it's as well to cough up a last few observations on Saturday's exercise in democracy in the Burlington Hotel. Readers should suspend any irritation at this revisitation. It's just that none of us can reasonably expect to be compos mentis - even to the extent we are - by the time this comes around again.

Stuck in the Burlington on a fine May afternoon last weekend, you couldn't be sure whether dismay or boredom would overwhelm you first. As soon as the prospect of Rule 21 being tidied off the books began to evaporate, it was only a matter of time before some formulaic equivocation was going to be concocted and given the Ministry of Truth treatment.

The saddest sight was GAA President Joe McDonagh trying to muster an enthusiastic line of patter for the benefit of a thoroughly unimpressed media conference. It wasn't a matter of believing or not believing McDonagh's performance. All anyone had to do was draw a comparison between the flamboyance of his declaration at annual congress - "I believe that time (for abolition) has now come" - and the qualification-ridden response of the weekend.

Then there was the elevation of unity over principle. If something as wilfully divisive as Rule 21 is on an organisation's books, there can be no satisfactory unity of purpose. Either it should be there or it shouldn't. A credible halfway house cannot be designed - nor was it at the weekend.

The argument was won fair and square by opponents of reform. It was then dressed up, according to the conventions of such occasions, as an uplifting experience. (Saturday reminded students of such things of the Tanaiste Mary Harney, then in Fianna Fail, enthusing on television - in an inhaled helium sort of way - about the quality of the discussion the night the gang of 22 failed to unhorse Mr Haughey back in October 1982).

The GAA is of course within its rights to decide to do whatever it wants about its own rules. Outsiders can look on in varying states from curiosity to astonishment but that's the GAA's business. What the association can't do is evade the logical impact of such decisions on the way it is seen by the world at large. Particularly in relation to an issue like Rule 21 which has an obvious impact on the wider community.

For a start, the events of the weekend brought to the surface a bizarre line in partitionist thinking. Northern opinion on this matter has always sensed the danger and been careful to stress that whereas the debate on Rule 21 shouldn't be exclusively decided by Ulster delegates, their views on the issue should be carefully heard.

More bizarre have been the strands of southern thinking which maintain that a provision tossed onto the rulebook nearly 100 years ago has, in the last 30 years, somehow become an indispensable part of northern counties' cultural armour and one on which they alone may pronounce.

It's hard to imagine that anyone remotely connected with the GAA doesn't have considerable sympathy for the wrongs suffered by GAA members at the hands of the security forces. It's equally hard to argue that people in the south can hope to understand what it's like living in a society where such wrongs are believed to be systematic.

Joe McDonagh's predecessor Jack Boothman, a popular figure in the north, made the point last week when calling for the rule to be abolished. "I know that people in the south can't quite understand what northern nationalists have gone through," he said. "I can't full appreciate it and I have been a regular visitor there."

Yet the strained circumstances of a dysfunctional society are being held up as not just an important influence but the only valid influence. Recent events show that a majority of people in Northern Ireland and the island as a whole are trying to address the dysfunction by creating a bit of breathing space to see if trust can be developed. Last Saturday shows that there are also some who are determined not to budge until everyone's gone home.

The motivation for such implacability is obvious. Victims of crime don't necessarily make good criminologists. More depressing is the way in which some southern counties have acquiesced in the retention of a rule which shames the GAA.

Although GAA Director General Liam Mulvihill was at pains to inform Saturday's media conference that the issue wasn't being retained at the behest of just Ulster, his earlier response about dissatisfaction with the northern security forces and the unwillingness to accept the policing commission - to take what McDonagh had referred to as "the leap of faith" at April's congress - on trust was something of a contradiction.

How do you put sense on what was decided? Essentially the opposition had more strongly-held opinions on the matter and showed the stomach to see the business through. Supporters of McDonagh's initiative turned out to be flaky and began running for the emergency exits from an early stage. Accordingly, when the good old boys from Cork sublimated their rebel stand into a motion of masterly evasion - agreeing to delete Rule 21 in principle (but not in practice) - it was seized on with great exhalations of relief.

Again, that's their business but from the point of view of making a statement about itself, the GAA emerged as deeply ungenerous and out of touch with its own community on both sides of the border.

Presumably we can all be spared any further vapouring about how the GAA was never found wanting when bridges needed to be built as the river will be run well dry by the time this bridge is built. Like the Japanese soldiers who used periodically wander out of jungles up until the 1970s, believing that World War II was still in progress, the GAA's eventual emergence on the issue of Rule 21 will be a matter for baffled amusement rather than congratulation.

In all of this, a final word of commendation for Joe McDonagh is in order. He has been on the end of some sly digs in the last week. The first person to have brought credit to the GAA on this dreadful issue has ended up being blamed because of the implacability of some and the queasiness of others.

Having interpreted GAA policy on the issue at April's congress and interpreted correctly rather than through-the-looking-glass, he obtained the unanimous approval of Central Council to hold a special congress - in keeping with another unanimous decision of Central Council in 1995. Perhaps the only further action that should have been taken - albeit one that McDonagh as president couldn't really have pursued - was to force a vote on the issue.

It may not have passed but it's no harm to show people who play with matches that occasionally you get burnt.