Composition of GAC needs to be addressed

How quickly the picture changes. At last month's Congress the GAA could content itself that a series of carefully prepared proposals had moved forward disciplinary protocol if not quite to state-of-the-art then at least to a greatly improved efficiency.

Little over a month later the GAA's disciplinary jurisdiction is in crisis. If you think that's hyperbole, read on. The one quality demanded of such a system is its consistency and it is clear the current Games Administration Committee is incapable of delivering it.

So instead of consistently applied rules, intercounty Gaelic games now have players who commit ridiculous fouls, referees who refuse to discipline them properly and a committee in charge which has abdicated its responsibility to enforce the association's rules and procedures. This mess was capped at the weekend by the abject performance - even by its own phenomenal standards in the area - of Central Council nearly overturning one of the suspensions correctly imposed by GAC.

All three players at the heart of the weekend's high-profile decisions had done enough to get 12-week suspensions. Tyrone footballer Gavin Devlin did but Clare captain Seán McMahon did not and Tipperary's Eamonn Corcoran came within an ace of having his overturned.

Where does that leave consistency? To recap. Corcoran's suspension was the most cut-and-dried: a striking offence, reported to the match referee and included in his official report. How could it not be 12 weeks? Tipperary cooked up a specious defence that the fourth official, who had reported the offence to the referee, had no authority for such intervention.

This ignores the fact that had that argument been accepted (which it shouldn't have been - the fourth official is after all appointed by the GAA to officiate in a neutral manner), GAC could have launched an investigation for which purposes the fourth official's testimony would have been 24-carat. End result: 12 weeks.

Central Council nearly overturned this. Anyone who attends meetings of this institution (which met in camera at the weekend) can't fail to be struck by the dismal quality of debate and the poverty of the deliberative process. At one appeal some time ago, a delegate could be heard declaring "to hell with the rules" in support of "justice" for an appeal that had been demolished on logical grounds by the then GAC. No wonder last year's Strategic Review Committee sought urgent change in the composition of Central Council. Naturally such change proved impossible to implement.

Devlin was seen stamping on Laois's Colm Parkinson in the National League final. The match referee, who in fairness hadn't spotted that offence, gave him a yellow card, a plainly inadequate sanction. GAC intervened and imposed a 12-week suspension. Bravo.

McMahon struck Conor Gleeson (who had earlier struck McMahon) in the Tipperary-Clare match. Referee Aodhán Mac Suibhne immediately took the Clare player aside and red-carded him. So far, so good. Then in his report to GAC Mac Suibhne cited the player for dangerous use of the hurl. This placed McMahon outside the remit of a Category B offence - "striking with hurley, head, kicking or stamping" - and its minimum 12-week suspension. GAC declined to intervene and instead imposed a four-week ban. This was in defiance of the committee's jurisdiction to use video evidence to review the findings of a referee's report, as agreed last August.

The Disciplinary Rules and Procedures Report was successfully piloted through this year's annual Congress in Belfast. It contained a couple of recommendations for Central Council, which were coincidentally accepted at the weekend. One of them was a restatement of the role of video evidence.

Under the heading of Operational Principles, this recommends (1) A committee or council in charge may use video evidence to substantiate/complement/clarify what is contained in a referee's report; (2) A committee or council in charge or investigating committee may use video evidence to formulate and prefer charges in relation to alleged offences not contained in a referee's report.

So how can the GAC justify some of its recent decisions not to overrule a referee's report? It is clear the above provision is being undermined from within the GAC. You feel sympathy for chairperson Tony O'Keeffe. He didn't select his committee. Members are elected by provincial councils and Central Council. It's luck of the draw what sort of a committee the chairperson gets.

How else could you explain the decision with which the current GAC announced itself - the Nowlan Park debacle? Having summoned Kilkenny and Tipperary players to answer video-based charges, GAC acquitted them on the basis the referee's report shouldn't be overruled. Why then were they called in the first place? It's fairly obvious that the decision to call the players was countermanded by GAC when it met.

In a way there is a circular logic to all of this.

Why should players or referees observe GAA rules when the committee in charge of discipline refuses to? GAA president Seán Kelly addressed this in the aftermath of last weekend's anarchy when he again advocated the breaking-up of the GAC into fixture making and disciplinary functions and went further.

"There's a lot of merit in looking at the make-up of the disciplinary committee," he told The Irish Times. "Personally I think it would be more desirable if we had more independent members, not representative of provincial councils or any other interests and not in a position to be influenced - or for that perception to exist."

There is a crying need for such a reform. Ideally there should be a small committee, built around a discipline commissioner. It should be chaired by someone from a legal background and composed of two or three GAA officials with a disinterested track record of upholding discipline.

Maybe the current deficiencies are the natural result of a culture of compromise and accommodation within the world of officialdom. But that sort of culture can be challenged and changed. It happened in the once wild-west ethos of Australian Rules football. Once every player who steps out of line receives the appropriate suspension the penny drops.

How long it takes to drop at official level is another matter.

smoran@irish-times.ie