Cultural choices abound. Yesterday, having mournfully slid my pike back into the thatch until 2048, I could slip on my striped blazer and straw boater and get out to Sandycove with a copy of Ulysses to stroke some Americans, after which maybe back into town for a gorgonzola sandwich. Or I could go to a saloon bar and watch the World Cup.

World cups haven't been the same for me since I started working (yeah, yeah). In school and student days (and, come to think of it, Sunday newspaper days), it was possible to absorb important matches and about four pints without losing your edge (unless you'd one of those tricky exams). Now it's different.

Sports editors won't buy the "I am twisted with drink and, anyway, no one's interested/nothing's happening in the GAA at the moment" line.

Already my thoughts are in Thurles on July 12th. After the Munster hurling final work is done, what then? Stop along the way and watch the World Cup final while drinking fizzy water (eeek) or settle overnight somewhere around Thurles (eeek)?

The World Cup is a great international event, truly global in the interest it provokes and coming closer than any other sporting festival (such as the drug-addled Olympics) to emphasising the worldwide community we inhabit - even allowing for English fans and whatever rogue gene got into these representatives of a normally mild-mannered race.

It is one of the GAA's great problems that an international outlet has yet to be established in its games. This autumn the "international rules" series with Australia is being revived and the next four years will determine whether an international link is viable.

The players' desire to represent their country is unarguable. The series to date have shown that there is an Irish audience for the game, with crowds of 30,000 attending the final tests in 1984 and '87.

Australia was the problem. Low interest from sponsors and an unwillingness to promote the game led to widespread indifference.

The hope within Croke Park is that the Australians have finally come to the conclusion that they have no realistic chance of international exposure without this collaboration with the GAA. It is hoped that the sustained activity of short tours featuring two Tests, to be held every year for four years, will institutionalise the idea.

Hope lies down that road but in the meantime what have been the GAA's lessons from the World Cup, particularly in the earlier part of this decade when the World Cup dominated life in Ireland?

On a simple level, the GAA just can't compete against something of such a scale. From 1966, when expanding television coverage brought the World Cup into the Irish mass consciousness for the first time, media and marketing attention have made it inescapable. Croke Park is probably glad that the tournament takes place only once every four years.

At least with Ireland not involved, GAA presidents aren't persecuted anymore for their reaction to every match played by the country in a World Cup. Ever since one former president answered the question by saying that he had been in the garden communing with nature, reporters have circled predatorily to see if the more recent holders of the office could be tempted into a similar solecism.

It is worth pointing out that the impact hasn't been entirely without benefit for the GAA. There is no doubt that there has been a sharpened sense of competition in the leisure market and considerably enhanced marketing.

Croke Park's facility at exploiting the popularity of the games is unrecognisable from eight years ago when Ireland was engulfed by Italia '90. To an extent this was partly due to reasons beyond the GAA's control: the rise of new counties in both football and hurling.

But it is also due to progressive moves on the part of the association and the initiatives on sponsorship and the development of Croke Park.

There is equally no doubt that soccer has thrived in the 1990s. The impetus came from the success of the national team but it has also been sustained by the relentless hype of Sky Sports. The impact around the country has been marked, with more and more children taking up the game.

Yet there have been limitations to the spread of soccer. The success of the national team has generated little enough funds for the FAI, because of the demands of professional players. As a result, the game is still short of the sort of facilities and infrastrucure which the GAA has in abundance.

Neither - and partly as a consequence of the above - are the teams as deeply rooted within their communities. Even on a participation level, it is rare outside of Dublin for promising footballers to turn their back on the GAA in favour of soccer unless they have a particular talent for it.

Furthermore, with the fortunes of the national team so influential in the success of soccer, the game responds to criteria over which it has little control.

In general the GAA has survived the increased competitiveness of the modern world. Parts of Dublin can be classified as blackspots where football is hardly mapped, and GAA Director General Liam Mulvihill has recognised the potential of the crisis to undermine the games nationally, given the population profile of the county.

Attendances at matches have also been affected in a peculiar way. Only two high-profile tournament internationals have taken place on championship afternoons and obviously the crowds suffered - although it's hard to imagine any other sport that could go head-to-head with an Ireland World Cup match and still draw 17,000, as the Leinster semi-final between Offaly and Kilkenny did in 1990.

But, strangely, fixtures appear to have been affected by the World Cup despite the non-involvement of Ireland. Four years ago, Dublin-Kildare twice drew only 23,000 (the fact that the matches were on a Saturday is irrelevant, as the Leinster Council has taken good gates on the same day) and Cork-Kerry only 24,000. Both fixtures would normally attract considerably greater numbers - in the case of Dublin and Kildare, twice the number.

Dublin's county board isn't expecting as big a crowd for next Sunday's replay with Kildare as turned out for the draw and one of the reasons advanced is the World Cup.