Ah the whips and scorns of time. As old Hamlet asked, who could bear them? Jimmy Cooney made an honest mistake with time on Saturday afternoon. But the simple and understandable nature of his misdemeanour could never free the GAA from its painful responsibilities.

A replay was the only justice which the games administration committee could have dispensed. With that decision should have come a sincere and heartfelt apology to both teams and the general public.

Special words should have been reserved for Clare. Their sensitivities are raw at present ("sure we're public enemy number one", noted Fergie Tuohy on Saturday) and there is no team in the country who, finding themselves in Clare's position on Saturday evening, wouldn't have shrugged and noted that in life some cookies crumble that way.

There is some bitter irony in the whole matter which won't be easily digested by the Munster champions. Clare are to be double victims of the GAA's inconsistent approach to technology. Players, Colin Lynch the latest and most celebrated, can be suspended on the basis of video evidence yet a referee with an old-fashioned stop-watch and a hundred other duties has no back-up.

The entire incident, a refreshingly novel embarrassment for the GAA in what has been a tiresomely embarrassing season, raises many questions about the manner in which major GAA games are presented. Several aspects are unfair to players, spectators and TV audiences.

Saturday's debacle was special in that it involved a tampering with the previously sacred notion that championship games are of fixed duration. However for many years the GAA has allowed injury time to be in the gift of the referee and, depending on the circumstances, the referee giveth or the referee taketh way.

The original game between Clare and Offaly a couple of weeks back was notable in that it finished just seconds after normal time when Jamesie O'Connor had balanced the scales with his equalising point. What GAA referee wouldn't have blown time just then?

When you leave a referee with the discretion to play out injury time as he sees fit, you leave him subconsciously susceptible to the temptations of the engineered draw. How many games have we watched, when with a score between the sides we have sensed (correctly) that the referee is going to allow the team with the deficit one attack and then blow as soon as the ball is kicked out. It's no way to run a major sport.

It has long been a GAA solecism to suggest remedies which "smack of another code", but if Saturday's mess is the price of purity than the GAA should start borrowing ideas fast. Senior intercounty championship games should be played under the rule of a timekeeper. Players and spectators should be able to glance at a large clock and ascertain precisely how much normal time is left. More importantly, the lesson of the World Cup should be absorbed: Towards the end of normal time players and spectators should be informed of precisely how much injury time will be added. In games like hurling and football where scores are frequent this is a necessity.

There are other small matters which the GAA might attend to. The use of yellow and red cards to mark bookings and dismissals has already been discussed and would aid clarity especially in the matter of bookings. The outcome of the frequent little conferences between sinning players and admonitory referees are often incomprehensible to spectators. And it is only a few years ago since the football All-Ireland final was also reduced to farce when Paddy Russell had to send Charlie Redmond off twice in the one half.

While we are getting these things off our chest, can nothing be done about the mysterious methods of substitution in major games.

While some cratur on the wrong side of a fair shoulder gasps his last, another player sprints to the referee with a note from his mother saying that he is to wear two pairs of socks, is not to be roughed up and is not a member of the RUC. Meanwhile some other poor shamed soul slips away over the sideline. All highly unsatisfactory.

When Eamon Taaffe reported for duty on Saturday afternoon Clare had a complicated series of positional changes which they wished to execute. Messages ran like Chinese whispers from one player to another until eventually, (just as the crowd were beginning to voice their disapproval) Christy Chaplin headed for the sideline. How often have we seen games where something similar happened and the referee restarted the game before the player to be substituted had even been informed?

What is wrong with the simple idea of holding up cards indicating the number of the player coming on and the number of the player coming off? Beautifully simple. On Saturday the first inkling many in the press box had of Billy Dooley's arrival was when he scored his goal.

And what about some consistency in the business of discipline. The melodrama of the Limerick Inn and the subsequent retirement of Colin Lynch's jersey should not obscure the fact that ultimately he deserved some punishment.

So too, however, do the two Offaly players who should have been sent off in the latter stages of the game on Saturday. Their use of the stick was as wild as anything Lynch perpetrated. In the brief history of hurling, however, the four minutes at the start of the Munster final have a different quality than the last minutes of the All-Ireland semi-final. The controversy du jour is different and the Offaly deeds will never get a big screen showing at a disciplinary committee near them.

These are small matters, but in an era of big sponsorships and major TV deals they should have been dealt with years ago.

It is unfortunate that Clare should have to swallow all this in the current climate, but the apparent equanimity of Ger Loughnane's response yesterday will win back some lost friends.

Clare looked bruised in their dressing-room on Saturday evening. Not physically but mentally. This great hurling adventure of theirs was never meant to include joyless seasons like this one with its depressing chronology of controversies and rows.

They are an intelligent, exuberant bunch of players and they richly deserve the recognition which this summer's distractions have denied them. Alone of modern GAA teams, they have found the will and hunger to keep the show spinning through a number of seasons. Through sheer will they have prolonged their lifespan not just through the crushing injury inflicted on them by two lost Munster finals but through four seasons at the top as well.

Their arrival has been the best thing to happen to hurling in decades. This week, however, they have the difficult task of accepting that in justice they should carry their weary limbs onto a pitch yet again and ensure that this All-Ireland semi-final is won morally as well as technically.