LockerRoom/Tom Humphries Strange, isn't it, how the GAA rolls on year in and year out despite itself. After a week which brought out the weasel worst in the organisation we had a weekend of triumph, two glorious days in Croke Park where the games were showcased and celebrated and the greatness somehow overcame the threatening smallness of some of the people involved.

It's been a hard enough week on the sporting coalface and probably as good a time as any to look into the business of violence on the field.

The hoopla surrounding the extracts from Roy Keane's book has been something to behold. Someday soon the media will eat itself. Scarcely anybody has read the book and we all know well that for the huge fee paid to be justified the serialised extract has to be juicy enough to sell papers and then sell books. That's the game. Yet the judgments have been swift. Across the news and sports pages last week Keane ranged in caricature form from a foaming at the mouth psychotic to a man who "doesn't give the impression of having a well-thumbed library."

Most of our outrage centres on the Alf Inge Haaland business, Keane's vigilante-style retribution for a perceived slight back when he snapped his cruciate ligament. The odd thing about it is (and the thing which will bring us back to the GAA in just a moment) is that the tackle is no more excusable or no worse now than it was when it was committed 18 months ago. Nobody who saw it could have doubted the intention. Nobody who saw it was in any doubt there was a history of animosity between the two men. That doesn't make what happened right. It just makes the fuss a little hard to take.

If Roy Keane is to receive additional punishment now through the courts or through the FA it is for candour. Alfe Inge Haaland is no more seriously injured now than he was 10 days ago. He has seen an avenue open up for him which might offer legal satisfaction as opposed to the mere fiscal satisfaction his and Manchester City's insurance will have already provided.

The point is, though, in the matter of intent Keane's tackle is still the same tackle it was and we see tackles and challenges with the same intent made all the time. Apparently, though, we'd all sleep easier in our beds if Roy Keane would just deny intent or pretend to be sorry.

Not for the first time this year the Keane case reminds me of the old story about Brendan Behan appearing before the district justice and asking him, "which would be the least offensive to his lordship, if I made an insincere apology or if I didn't apologise at all?"

We are to have an inquiry into the business of Gerry Quinn's hand and the contact which was made with it by the hurl of a Waterford forward whose name has been widely circulated. We will be inquiring only because Quinn will in all likelihood miss the All-Ireland final. If the strike was malicious it achieved its intent. What, though, if it were malicious, if indeed it was the very same strike and Quinn had been wearing one of those protective gloves or had moved his hand at the last instant, we would be having no inquiry. Not even if the incident had been captured on camera.

My point, (I do have one, I swear) is that we have a high tolerance level for violence in sport and a high capacity for spewing hypocrisy about it. There's a dark and secret part of us which shudders with excitement when we see a truly evil tackle or a cruel swing or the beginnings of a fight.

IF Keane had missed Haaland, if Quinn had deflected the blow, if the Kerry county board weren't fans posing as office holders, the incidents which occurred would still look the same and have the core intent but the disciplinary outcomes would be different and possibly punishments would be consistent.

We like the smell of gunsmoke, though. We enjoy the sight of blood. We cherish the hard man. 'He's some boy', we say as the ankles are scythed from beneath the fleet young forward. We all feel much better about ourselves when we make clucking noises of disapproval when the bandages are being applied. If there's no treatment needed, if the putative victim is left thinking that he dodged a bullet well sure feck, isn't it a man's game.

After two minutes in Croke Park yesterday there was the sort of fight to which the guards would be called if it happened in your workplace. After four minutes a Kilkenny defender was flattened. The only sign of disapproval from the crowd came when yellow cards were produced.

So we have all grades of justice to suit all our needs. The GAA is wonderfully flexible about this. At the right time of the year a top inter-county player can commit any sort of assault against an opponent or a referee and be sure that he is being watched by a paying audience composed entirely of the visually impaired. Even if a truculent official demurs and causes a red card it can still be finessed, fixed, taken care of.

It's like drug taking in other sports. You just have to have your timing right. You can break a fella's hand, no problem, but don't break it if he is going to miss out on the All-Ireland over it. Lie in the long grass get him in the league when he'll just miss his work and his hobbies and a few months hard training.

You can bodycheck people, swing at them how you like, but do it early in the game when you have the excuse that you were softening him up, letting him know you were there.

C'mon, if you haven't softened a fella up you've probably never played.

And never own up. If you can fake sincerity you have it made. If you are caught bang to rights plead insanity. You don't know what came over you. Red mist. A moment of madness.

Anyway Croke Park will keep getting filled. And players will keep coming with shameful intent, ready to play the discipline lottery.

We'll all roll on in the happy excitement until the next outrage. Nobody will consider Kerry's achievements to be tainted or regard the Quinn business as anything other than an attempt to make Clare put up or shut up about the incident.

Ain't life a kick in the head?