What joy it is to be alive in Ireland in a week when a committee of the GAA allows a legitimate appeal. The weekend decision by the Association's management committee to allow Tyrone back into the Ulster under-21 football championship and play their postponed final against Fermanagh at the end of next month was as welcome as it was unexpected.

Following on the heels of the significant mood-swing evident in relation to Rule 42 at Congress, the GAA is in real danger of earning a label as a progressive and modern sporting organisation. Any more of this and some of us are going for a long lie down.

Much of the credit must go to Tyrone's under-21 manager, Mickey Harte. He has laboured long and hard in the cause of youth football in the county and having presided over an All-Ireland winning minor team then made the seamless progression to the next age group. Success has followed him and his management team and Tyrone went into this year's competition as defending provincial and All-Ireland champions.

A first round encounter with Down, who fielded a number of All Ireland medallists, proved to be a tough test of character but Tyrone came out the other side and followed with victory over Monaghan in the semi-final to set up a final against Fermanagh. With a significant number of survivors from last year's team and a new crop of university players attending the Sigerson finishing school, Harte was optimistic of repeating last year's successes.

The foot and mouth outbreak in Ardboe put paid to that and the Ulster Council moved quickly to postpone the final a fortnight ago, along with the replay of the MacRory Cup. As the full implications of that confirmed case became clear, Ulster officials acted swiftly and signalled their intention to nominate Fermanagh to proceed from Ulster into the All-Ireland under-21 series.

Harte and Tyrone were aggrieved but their expressions of concern went beyond mere parochialism. It was, they said, a decision that flew in the face of logic. The 30 day exclusion rule which barred a county from competition after a confirmed outbreak of foot and mouth within its boundaries had been consistently applied by the GAA up to this point.

That was fine as far as it went and there were clear implications for the Tyrone side as it drew players from the area of the confirmed outbreak.

But beyond those 30 days, and operating on the premise that there was no further outbreak, the jettisoning of Tyrone from the under-21 championship altogether seemed at best misguided and at worst perverse. When the exclusion period had run its course there was no reason why the final could not be set down for decision again, with even the proviso that the players from the affected area did not take part. Unlike for example the schoolboys or the senior teams in the National League where there were exams or championship matches looming on the horizon, there was in effect the rest of the calendar year to complete the under-21 championship.

But initially, at least, the will of the GAA hierarchy was immutable and to many observers that was that. Mickey Harte, however, adopted a different approach and went on a media offensive to make his case and appeal for support from other counties which, with one foot and mouth case, could find themselves in the same invidious position. You wouldn't have fancied his chances but he ploughed relentlessly at his own furrow taking up every newspaper and television opportunity to express his viewpoint.

And for whatever reason, Harte and Tyrone were ultimately successful. That in itself is significant because just a few years ago the guaranteed way to set the GAA mandarins against you was to make a song and dance in the media. The accepted mode of lobbying was a much more surreptitious affair and generally involved calling in one or two long-standing favours from officials in high places. But the last week has provided an indication that even the GAA is developing a little media savvy and exhibiting a willingness to look at issues in the round rather than coming at them from one, blinkered viewpoint.

So much for the positive. The downside to all of this is that it leaves the GAA's overall policy in relation to the foot and mouth cases here in the North and the solitary outbreak over the border in a degree of confusion. Two weeks ago, the under-21 and MacRory finals were summarily cast aside within hours of the news from Ardboe as the Ulster Council followed the central hard line.

But as the full ramifications of the complete implementation of that policy have begun to sink in, it looks like a portion of pragmatism has been added to the mix. No games mean no gate revenue and perhaps just as significantly no television money and as it pushes ahead with ambitious development plans those are financial hits the GAA simply cannot afford.

There could be an All-Ireland series without the Ulster counties but that would be a competition devalued to the point of embarrassment. As of now three Ulster counties - Armagh, Antrim and Tyrone - have confirmed foot and mouth cases and their initial forays in the Ulster championship have been postponed to ensure they satisfy the 30 day restriction. Antrim's game against Derry, originally fixed for May 13th will now be played on June 3rd by which time it will be 14 weeks since the county's last competitive match. Similarly the Tyrone-Armagh encounter is now set down for May 20th, a date which has not been altered despite the second outbreak in Ardboe confirmed over the weekend.

The noises emanating from the Ulster Council are that the championship must and will go ahead this year but the acid test of that determination would be its reaction should news of a fresh foot and mouth case emerge, say, two days before one of its refixed games. Does another 30 day clock start ticking or does the affected county face forced withdrawal from the championship altogether? In the end the GAA could have its mind made up for it by some of the inherent absurdities of the situation and the creeping realisation that this is a virus against which there is no guaranteed protection.

It is ridiculous, for example, that while Omagh CBS are denied the opportunity of competing in the Hogan Cup because of foot and mouth in Tyrone, St Michael's Enniskillen, which draws players from Tyrone as well as Fermanagh, has been nominated to progress at their expense. And as the Ulster championship draws nearer there is the prospect of supporters from unaffected counties traveling through those with outbreaks to get to games. Scratch the surface and the GAA's zero tolerance policy becomes increasingly hard to justify.

In all of this there is the nagging feeling that to worry about such niceties is more than a little irrelevant given the perilous situation many farmers, themselves GAA members and players, currently face. But the exigencies of any situation do not excuse ill-judged or wrong-headed decision making. By standing up bravely, Mickey Harte has proved that. And to its credit, the GAA has shown it was prepared to listen.