In New York, they used to say, there are eight million stories. And this past week there seemed to be just as many here as the fall-out from the Omagh bomb drizzled down over Omagh itself, Buncrana, Beragh, Augher, Drumquin, Loughmacrory, Eskra, Donemana and Madrid.

There was 12-year-old Alastair Hall. He, according to his family, was just mad about rugby. Three weeks before the bomb he and his brother were having a kick about outside Cardiff Arms Park. Alistair lost the lower part of his right leg. "He loved playing," said his father, "but he will never be able to again."

And then there was the poignant sight of colourful, unfamiliar GAA club jerseys placed on the coffins of Brenda Logue and Jolene Marlowe. They told the stories of young women taking an active playing part in an association which was pushing back boundaries to become a modern, progressive sporting organisation. Brenda and Jolene quite literally played their part in that.

And a few days later there was the injured Omagh gaelic footballer hobbling on crutches to leave flowers on the bridge just around the corner from where the bomb exploded.

But in the midst of all this awful pain there were people doing good things, many of them small things, but all of them, without reservation, good things.

George Graham, the Leeds United manager, did a good thing. Within hours of being told that a young Leeds fan was one of those being treated in the Erne Hospital in Enniskillen, Graham was there to meet him, offer some Leeds memorabilia and invite him to a game at Elland Road just as soon as he was well enough. The extent of the young boy's injuries meant it was as much as he could do to manage a faint smile first of awe and then of thanks. That flickering smile is one of the enduring images of this long week.

Celtic Football Club did a good thing. Eight-year-old Oran Doherty was, by all accounts, a Celtic obsessive as only young boys of that age can be. Football had only just started to impinge properly on his life and with Celtic's Premier League title last season he must have thought that this club of his won something every season. This week he would have been looking forward to the second leg of the Champions League qualifier against Croatia Zagreb on Wednesday night.

Instead he was buried in a coffin draped with a Celtic flag last Wednesday. The club responded by sending a delegation to the funeral that included Danish international, Marc Reiper and youth team coach, Willie McStay. Reiper is a centre-half and a mountain of a man. He helped to carry Oran's body almost awkwardly, balancing the small coffin on his broad shoulder. McStay has strong links with the area since his days as manager at Sligo Rovers and he was doing his small part to reciprocate all the good will he had encountered there.

Celtic's involvement in the mourning process was played out in the context of a series of debilitating disagreements and controversies that have swirled around the club in recent weeks. First there was the protest by a group of Belfast supporters at the opening league game of the season in response to what they perceived were accusations of bigotry against the club's Irish support allegedly made by the Celtic chairman Fergus McCann.

Then there was the unseemly row over win bonuses when the players reportedly expressed dissatisfaction with the £20,000 there were being offered for qualifying for the Champions' League.

All this, though, was as nothing compared to the scenes of horrendous grief and mourning that Reiper and McStay encountered in Buncrana. And they were scenes that gave Celtic a chance to take some small steps back towards its Irish roots and its charitable origins in the East End of Glasgow and away from the unseemly wrangles over inflated financial demands. If Omagh was a chance for a huge football club to rediscover just a little about itself and what it owes to its supporters then it is one small, positive chink of light.

The GAA also did good things. The association's president, Joe McDonagh, past president, Jack Boothman and countless other Ulster Council office-bearers stood shoulder to shoulder with rank and file members at the wakes and the funerals all through last week. Throughout his presidency McDonagh has been a repeated supporter of the games here and on many occasions that has meant journeys to GAA funerals. His presence has always been unobtrusive and it has always been welcome.

Last Saturday's remembrance service at Croke Park was perfectly understated and appropriately ecumenical. In the past week the GAA did everything required of it in meeting its obligation to honour the Omagh dead. The proposed diversion of a portion of the gate receipts from next Saturday's hurling replay is another important, practical act of solidarity.

Northern Ireland team manager Lawrie McMenemy was yet another who did a good thing. On Monday morning there were still indications from IFA headquarters that the international friendly with Malta two days later would go ahead. But McMenemy - a newcomer to what passes for politics here - had spent the weekend in Belfast and was at Solitude to watch the champions Cliftonville in the company of IFA president Jimmy Boyce.

McMenemy was clearly shocked by the television pictures of the bomb's aftermath he watched in the Cliftonville boardroom and he made it quite clear that the international could not and should not go ahead. "No one," he said, "has the heart to play after this." That decision was announced at a hastily-arranged press conference and the IFA duly made its contribution to the broader response of an entire community.

Of course there are a myriad of other stories, other good things, so many of them unheard and unheralded. George Graham, Celtic Football, the GAA and the IFA made their own contributions. The goodness of those small things has never shone so brightly.