An Irishman's Diary

With reports that GAA fans have taken to snorting cocaine in Croke Park, it seemed like a good time to get out of Dublin and attend an Ulster championship match in West Belfast.

Andersonstown is the perfect antidote to the madness of life in the capital. Depending on the game you're watching, an afternoon in Casement Park can have the same sobering effect as a whole weekend in Lough Derg. Whatever the football lacks in dourness, the stadium itself makes up for.

At its best, the experience is a welcome reminder of those days - before we lost the run of ourselves - when the only way fans could get high at a GAA match was by watching it from the roof of the stand.

As usual, in recent times, the trip north was a chance to admire the M1: now stretching all the way to the Border. The only one thing that spoils the drive now is the road's de facto apartheid system, under which cars registered in the Republic are confined to the slower left-hand lane, while Northern cars get to use the faster one, on the right.

There's nothing to stop you as a Southern driver using the outside lane. It's just that when you do, a jeep with an aggressive Northern reg number - all those Xs and Zs look like expletives warning you to get out of the way - is liable to loom suddenly from behind, moving from nought to 60 per cent of your rear-view mirror in three seconds flat. Maybe it's the sterling differential, but Northern cars all seem to be able to do 20 miles an hour extra in the Republic.

Curiously enough, the system is reversed on the other side of the Border, where Northern drivers slow down and it's the Southerners' turn to ignore the speed cameras. It should all average out on a trip to Belfast. Except of course, that once you hit the Border (and you probably will hit it, unless you brake sharply), the M1 disappears suddenly, like Cinderella's coach, and turns into a mountain pass. You're still 50 miles from Casement Park, and the sobering experience has begun already.

The North's roads may still be catching up, but Sunday provided a dramatic example of the peace dividend in West Belfast, where the police - of all people - were directing match traffic. In the old days, the RUC avoided GAA matches like Free Presbyterians avoid drink. But there was the PSNI on Andersonstown Road, directing Derry and Monaghan supporters like it was the most normal thing in the world.

The mood of change even extended (unlike the PSNI) into the stadium, where, in a dramatic break with tradition, Monaghan played their opponents off the pitch. This sort of thing used to happen a lot back in the 1980s. But in the 19 years since we last reached an Ulster final, Monaghan fans had forgotten what it was like. By the end of Sunday's game, the memories were flooding back: of Nudie Hughes, and choc-ices, and ill-fitting crepe paper hats that the colours leaked out of when it rained.

It struck me for the first time that the logo on the current Monaghan jersey - FKM - looks very like a Northern car registration (in fact it's the name of an engineering company). And that's how it must have appeared in the wing mirrors of the Derry defence, as flying Monaghan forwards overtook them left, right, and sometimes centre, with reckless disregard for their own safety.

Everybody agreed afterwards that the winners were about seven points the better team, although of course only two of these points were on the actual scoreboard. Being a Monaghan supporter means that, no matter how dominant the side are, you never have a chance to relax and shout "olé" repeatedly as they string passes together in the closing stages of a game. Not that you're the sort of person who would, anyway.

Qualifying to meet Tyrone in the final next month was a dubious privilege. Conventional wisdom suggests the main issue about the game will be whether Tyrone win by a wide margin or an even wider one. But the result may be secondary on this occasion to Monaghan's main task: saving Ulster football's soul.

By reaching the final, paradoxically, Monaghan's modest support base has ensured that the province's showpiece will be played back where God intended it to be: Clones. We will leave it to future historians to explain how, for a few years in the early 21st century, the Ulster final was held annually in Dublin. Sufficient for now that this outrage has ended.

In fairness to Armagh and Tyrone, it can be argued that only the M1 and Croke Park could have dealt with the huge support bases (and their rapidly expanding egos) of recent years. But they must realise by now that too much big-city glamour can lead to decadence. Just look at the Dubs. If the Ulster Final continued to be held in Croker, Tyrone fans would soon have been snorting cocaine off their match programmes.

In St Tiernach's Park, Coke is still something that comes in bottles and it only gets up your nose if somebody makes you laugh when you're swallowing it. That issue aside, an Ulster final in Clones will be a welcome chance for Tyrone supporters to experience life in the slow lane again. Alternatively, they can try the other lane, where the traffic isn't moving at all.