Sean Moran On Gaelic Games: There we were in the press box in Limerick's Gaelic Grounds. The ground looks quite well now that the redevelopment is complete. The aftermath of Sunday's match however wasn't that pleasant with incensed noises coming off the home crowd and gardaí moving in to provide a precautionary escort for referee Séamus Roche.

An agitated man sidled in to give an impassioned speech to those of us not already departed to the dressing-rooms. There's no need for a transcript, but the gist of it was that the referee had robbed Limerick. The injury-time free, awarded against TJ Ryan for over-carrying, was cited as the game-breaker.

It was mildly protested that this mightn't have happened had the referee applied the rules and sent off Ryan over an hour previously. "For what?" Protested the incredulous crusader. Ummm, for striking with the hurl. It was on the television. "Ye're all very one-eyed."

The past few days have again indicated that referees have become all-purpose alibis for losing teams. This is partly explained by the crushing sense of disappointment at losing, but the complete lack of objectivity also plays a part.

Crowds at major Gaelic games fixtures are rightly praised for the good humour and bonhomie that supporters generally extend to each other during and after the match.

Sadly this, by and large exemplary behaviour, rarely extends to the referee. No one accepts that by accepting human arbitration, they also accept the frailties that go with it. Everyone wants it both ways.

Fr Séamus Gardiner, PRO of the National Referees' Committee, points to just one example: "If a referee blows every single foul, people won't be happy because the game isn't flowing. If he applies some form of advantage - and this is something that's done better by experienced referees - and lets the game flow, there's always the danger that no advantage results and if your team loses, all you remember are the seven frees you should have got."

A common lament from the masses tends to go something like this: "You have to feel sorry for the players, putting in six months of hard preparation for the championship only to go out because of some refereeing error."

Yet, teams go out because of error all the time. Missed frees, goalkeeping mishaps and defensive lapses are frequently directly to blame for a side losing a match. Yet how many times does the Sunday Game excoriate a player for making high-profile mistakes and accuse him of pouring down the drain all of his colleagues' hard work?

A couple of years ago the NRC issued an instructional video for referees, titled Control and Consistency. This is more than a snappy, alliterative title; in fact it suggests an almost utopian combination.

Control often means parking the rules and knowing when to blow and when to let go. This requires a referee the players trust to improvise in an impartial way. Consistency means the opposite - the application of rules to given situations in a predictable and rigorously enforced fashion.

But, as Gardiner indicates, people want it both ways: a referee who will apply "common sense" to whatever arises, regardless of what the rules actually prescribe. Then what seems sound interpretation in one match becomes a "disgrace" in another and the rulebook gets waved around to denounce what had previously been commended as common sense.

Then there's the "cultural" consideration or the conspiracy of the hardy. "It's a man's game," is a popular response to unpunished foul play. But this ambivalence doesn't extend just to the omerta of the dressing-room.

Look at what's happening at committee level. It has been confirmed this week that the Games Administration Committee is ideologically opposed to taking all steps within its power to eliminate foul play. The current GAC has apparently decided that if a referee takes action, however weak-minded and inadequate that may be, the matter is closed.

Yet, Central Council has authorised the GAC to use video evidence to revisit incidents of high-profile and blatant foul play - regardless of whether the referee had noticed it, issued a yellow card or generally copped out of describing it properly in the referee's report. In theory, you can understand the GAC's point. Referees should be supported in the decisions they take, even if occasionally wrong - with one obvious exception, the treatment of foul play.

This has to be an exception - and I'm not aware of any referee protesting to the previous GAC when over-ruled in this manner - because the dismal evidence is that officials are bottling hard decisions.

It's easy to see why. A referee's response to a foul can determine a player's future in any given season, never mind the match in question. No wonder they're nervous about doing the right thing, especially in light of the vast public emotions their responsibilities arise.

Two well-ventilated proposals would address this. Firstly, the introduction of a sin bin would liberate referees from the feeling that they're irrevocably altering the course of a match and maybe this would encourage more even application of the rules.

Secondly, the establishment of a small, independent disciplinary commission that would clamp down on foul play would go a long way to addressing the "culture" of transgression and the ambivalence that frequently greets it.

Given that at nearly every level of the GAA there exists some ambivalence to the rules, it's an unpleasant irony that referees are expected to tolerate weekly visceral abuse when they are simply reflecting that attitude.