Keith Duggan/Sideline Cut: Although he has been a hard man to empathise with over the last few years, I felt sad for Páidí Ó Sé last Sunday. Famed for his granite hardness, it is likely that the wan punches the Ventry man accepted from that bewildered Kerry fan in the closing seconds of an already infamous semi-final will hurt for a long, long time.

Although painted up as a sensation, it was a lonely moment. The Kerryman seemed to belong to a disappearing tradition: an Everyman from the decades when championship crowds were mostly men who wore jackets on a Sunday, who carried combs and got mass and, depending on their county of origin, sat in their seats in the expectation of a performance determined by tradition.

It was wrong and deplorable that Ó Sé was struck as he watched his Kerry team going up in flames and he handled the incident with the wry humour he has kept stubbornly boxed in his managerial years and with a touch of pure breeding, of class. It was a worthwhile graceful note to a genuinely terrible day for both him and Kerry.

It is possible to understand, though, what drove the Kerry supporter to take the extraordinary steps of leaving his seat, scaling the advertising hoarding and half-heartedly attacking Ó Sé. You can see from the photographs that the man is as mortified by his own actions as Páidí is surprised. It was not so much an act of aggression as a desperate plea for help.

I don't think it was the drubbing that made the man take leave of his composure or even the fact that Kerry managed only six points. It was being forced to stomach the acknowledgement that Kerry football had somehow lost touch that drove him to torment. There were Kerry players on the field, a few of them great, that appeared unable to recognise the game they were playing in. They were lost souls.

It was not their fault and the ease with which Páidí apparently reconciled himself to the loss through the tyranny of a new "system" was both mystifying and troubling. Páidí had to know Tyrone were going to fall deep and swamp his players. He had to. Maybe he believed that Kerry's brand of pure innovative football would win the day and when it got suffocated, he did not want to know.

All week long, we have been hearing about how the defensive arrangement of Ulster's new model armies is going to ruin the game. We have heard that Gaelic football is about long kicking and catching, that it should be this or must be that. It is like saying that a poem can only be a poem if it is a sonnet.

The complaints sound to me like a fear that the game itself will be found out; that it could be checkmated by a defensive system. To acknowledge that would be to admit its limitations. There has to be a faith in the game. Instead of fretting about the new system, commentators on the game should have fun just suggesting ways to break it down.

Last week saw the erosion of decades of predetermined thinking and a levelling of tradition. It promised a future where counties are going to have to get tactically smarter and bolder.

The conservatism in Gaelic football when it comes to tactics has long been staggering. Take Kerry last week. Former players queue up to laud Séamus Moynihan as one of the best ever players. So why not give him a chance to show it? Why not stick him in at full forward with 20 minutes left? Or bring him to midfield and place Darragh Ó Sé, a majestic fielder even in a dark hour for Kerry, on the edge of Tyrone's square. I would love to have seen Crowley, Ó Sé and the Gooch as a line just for 10 minutes, just to see Tyrone get jittery and to see if and how it would disrupt the utilitarian smoothness of their system.

Look, the worst that could happen is that it wouldn't work and when you are 0-9 to 0-3 down anyway, that is not a worry.

To complain that the remainder of the All-Ireland series is not worth watching because of the way the teams express the game is hollow and worse, it is a betrayal of the sport.

The thing about Gaelic football, the core of its appeal, has never been the sport itself. Be honest, very often, it is not a great game. Fouling does pay and may always do so, interpreting the tackle is as heavy a task as interpreting James Joyce and the game suffers from being the brother of hurling, the cocaine of field sports.

But yet there are many days when Gaelic football matches are misted with a feeling of pure greatness; that they seem like the true essence of sport. I have to say I have often had that feeling watching this current Armagh team. They are intelligent and lean and strangely humble; for a team charged with wrecking the game, they have a zealous respect for it. They are incapable of playing in a boring game of football.

I think the notion of their authoritarian brand of new football and Donegal's fast and cavalier approach to be completely intriguing. Being from Donegal, I want to believe that tomorrow's semi-final will be one of the games of this or any season but I also actually believe it.

But even if the quality of the actual game dips, the occasion itself will still border on the fantastic for those with a vested interest. Because the true appeal of Gaelic football has always been the mass dream, that which eludes hurling, of winning the All-Ireland. It is the only way left now for counties to celebrate themselves, to find a common cause. It makes people remember to care about who they are and where they are from. This friend of mine, Frank, was reading the Donegal Democrat columnist The Follower last week and reckons the following has become his favourite sports quote ever.

"God forgive me but on another occasion when a cross dog guarded the apples I brought in a mongrel bitch that was in season and had all the time I wanted. As a youth I understood the power of love. I say this because if we are to rob the Orchard men of Sam and we are quite capable of so doing we must use every trick in the book. We will have to plumb depths of tactical trickery and play courageously controlled football to depths as yet unknown."

The more you read it, the more you are inclined to like it. And his conclusion reads: "Focal Scur: Good times look to be ahead. We can make that great times if every Donegal person rows in behind the efforts of Brian and his lads. I want to see Samuel i measc na sléibhte arís sul bhfuighidh mé bás. The Bible allows us three score year and ten. I already had outlived the Biblical span by almost two years so Sam better hurry. Tiocfaidh ár lá agus le cuidiú Dé i 2003."

And the intangible appeal of Gaelic football is that it makes many people this fervent and wildly optimistic. Tens of thousands will turn up in Croke Park tomorrow bursting with a pride based on being a winner, just for a day, of exalting in themselves. If it is to be suggested that the only worthwhile way of doing this is by watching a team play football along certain ordered and long worshipped patterns, then the game truly has no future.