Seán Moran On GAAAs great GAA atrocities go, last Sunday's events at Healy Park were more dispiriting than a cause for outrage. Yet - and contrary to the creeping revisionism that always sidles in after a while in this sort of situation - that is no reason not to view it seriously and certainly no reason for the authorities not to take a tough stand in dealing with the assorted delinquencies.

The Tyrone-Dublin match should have been a showpiece start to the National League as there was a genuine sense of excitement at the imminent arrival of the new season. Instead the gala opening turned out to be an ill-tempered affair, full of niggling aggression and punctuated by heedless brawls. The deluge of critical reaction wasn't sensationalist but reflected unhappiness at the reckless indiscipline of the teams and their complete contempt for the rules and disregard for the authority of referee Paddy Russell.

This wasn't just a matter for the brawling players. Their irresponsibility at one stage threatened to spill over into the crowd, which would have created mayhem, a consequence with particularly grave consequences in cross-border counties where the lack of a police presence removes the ultimate restraint of law enforcement.

Misconduct like last Sunday's generally flare up unexpectedly and few would have turned up expecting the sort of atmosphere that quickly developed. But once it's under way, you can script the rest of it.

Grievance and injustice are the default settings for the team managements in the aftermath and so it was at the weekend. It came as no revelation that Mickey Harte is a more practised media performer than Paul Caffrey but, stripped down, the message from both managers was the same: refusal to criticise their own players and specious attempts to contextualise. Caffrey ignored questions he didn't like and Harte invited media to come to their own conclusions on the basis of his record and that of his teams - an irrelevance given his players' whole-hearted participation in the events.

Excelling at sport involves performing within the rules. Unwillingness to do this is cheating and should result in disadvantage to the offending players and their teams - to say nothing of persistent offenders being seen as liabilities. That's not always the case within Gaelic games. The connection between misbehaviour and appropriate punishment is not well established and despite much hard work on reforming the administrative structures for enforcing discipline, the signs are the situation has been deteriorating during the term of office of outgoing GAA president Seán Kelly.

This isn't because of any indifference on Kelly's part. In his public utterances he has consistently taken a firm line of indiscipline. His swift response to Sunday's disorder was a timely statement of intent as opposed to the usual meandering chain of events from waiting for the referee's report to initiating action. But what has happened in the past three years is a seemingly endless roll-back of measures designed to combat foul play. For a start the GAC elected in 2003 decided to ignore a power devised by its predecessor - and endorsed by Central Council - enabling inappropriately lenient refereeing decisions to be reviewed on video.

Its successor, the new Central Disciplinary Committee (CDC) didn't take such an absolute stance but last August, as soon as it revised the yellow card shown to Tyrone's Ryan McMenamin for what it considered a dismissible offence and issued a suspension, the recently established Disputes Resolution Authority (DRA) knocked down the decision.

At the time Kelly was bullish about the outcome and said that a motion, enshrining the power of review in the Official Guide, would go to this year's congress. Now it appears the matter has been referred to the Rule Book Task Force. The seven-man body, which is recognised as doing excellent work in recasting the unwieldy rulebook, doesn't look the most sympathetic forum for this proposal. It is chaired by Cork secretary Frank Murphy, a former referee implacably opposed to revisiting yellow-card incidents, and four of the remaining six members are panellists with the DRA, the body that overturned the McMenamin suspension.

They may set aside their misgivings and frame a motion for congress but there are no guarantees about its prospects there given the state of denial concerning foul play within the GAA, which led to inter alia strident demands for the abolition of the International Rules series so alien to the Gael were the disorderly scenes of last October's second Test.

Then there is the question of video evidence, which has been in limbo since the McMenamin case, admittedly more for lack of opportunity than as a matter of policy. But Con Hogan, chair of the CDC, seemed unconvinced about the admissibility of video in the Tyrone-Dublin case. That will be thrashed out at tonight's CDC meeting but were an overly cautious attitude to be taken the ramifications for the GAA's remaining credibility in the area of discipline would be disastrous.

Next we hear that the policy of keeping replacements in the stand and off the sideline is to be reversed at Croke Park.

This is a measure unpopular with managers. Paul Caffrey called his players down from the stand at Healy Park at the end of last Sunday's game because he feared for their safety. Joe Kernan made similar complaints after incidents between the crowd and Armagh's replacements during the heated Ulster final replay at Croke Park last July. There have in consequence been calls to abandon the policy. Yet the original decision to clear the sidelines was entirely correct. Imagine what the third and most serious brawl on Sunday would have turned into had there been an array of replacements on hand to get involved. It was envisaged when the policy of confining all panellists to the stand was introduced four years ago that the various grounds would make necessary arrangements to accommodate the additional players in the stand, not simply park them in among opposition supporters.

Now the trend appears to be to bring them back into the playing zone, in defiance of best practice in all other major field sports. Another regression.

Docking points from the counties would be a good idea but probably hard to sustain by rule, which makes no provision for such a sanction. There is, however, a simple, even-handed approach to last Sunday's events: under Rule 140 charge everyone involved in mass brawling with discrediting the association and give them eight weeks.

Of course this would be a severe blow for the counties in what is a 10-week league. But it would ensure the appropriate message would penetrate the inevitable hand-wringing and special pleading about "no one being injured" and "not a decent punch thrown" and "they're only scapegoats".

Would it be a deterrent? Let's see.

smoran@irish-times.ie