Gaelic Games Disciplinary Rules committee reportGAA suspensions will be separated at club and county level if proposals going before next month's congress are accepted. Yesterday the report of the Disciplinary Rules and Procedures sub-committee was launched in Croke Park.

Set up by outgoing president Seán McCague to address problems and anomalies within the rules and practices of the GAA, the report sets out a catalogue of suggested solutions.

In relation to players sent off in club matches or at any other level, the proposal is that the suspension be served at that level - provided that the offence in question is not considered serious (category A or B, interference with match officials and striking with head or hurley, kicking or stamping are exempted).

According to Paraic Duffy, chairperson of both the sub-committee and the Games Administration Committee, this will cover "roughly 90 per cent of the cases heard by the GAC over the past year".

Last year a number of incidents arose in which intercounty players were red-carded in club fixtures, leading to controversy when county boards lifted or overrode the referees' decisions. This recommendation will remove the incentive for this.

It also ensures a player sent off for a straight red card will miss the next match in that competition. This removes the potential for two players sent off in different All-Ireland semi-finals to be treated differently because one is played later than the other.

In addition the sub-committee moved to close the Darragh Ó Sé loophole. Last summer the Kerry captain was red-carded in a club match but had the decision rescinded. A further proposal recommends in relation to such offences the matter of jurisdiction over the player should be referred to a higher committee - provincial council or GAC at national level.

Over the past three months a great amount of confusion has been caused by the status of December and January as inoperable months for the purposes of suspension - with certain exceptions. According to Duffy, no rule generates more queries than this. Consequently it is recommended the exceptions to the rule be removed in order to bring clarity and ensure that suspensions adequately penalise the offender.

Another area rich in controversy has been the use of substitutes. Since it was decided to allow five substitutions in a match, the extra replacements have become confused with the entitlement to bring on blood substitutes with the result that there have been a number of high-profile cases in which too many replacements have been used.

This climaxed last summer when Cork used six replacements in the Munster football final replay against Tipperary. A disputed Munster Council (the jurisdiction of the provincial council created controversy at the time but the sub-committee recommends maintaining that status quo) decision let the result stand in Cork's favour but the sub-committee proposes any member of a playing panel be allowed take the field as a blood substitute, thus removing the requirement to use only 20 players in total.

The provision that matches be forfeit in the event of too many substitutes being used stands although there is a proposal that teams guilty of providing an incomplete list of replacements to the referee should not forfeit the match. This was drawn up before such a problem arose from the Sligo-Kildare NFL fixture last month.

It was a row over the fielding of too many substitutes that landed the Dublin County Board and the Na Fianna club in the High Court before Christmas. In answer to this and other cases that went to civil law the sub-committee proposes that an arbitration tribunal be established to encourage members and units of the GAA to take disputes to an internal panel.Access to this tribunal would be only through the GAA's Management Committee.

On a procedural level it is recommended that when the GAC is preparing video evidence to bring a charge against a player, those committee members engaged in the process should not sit at the hearing. This is to cut down on the possibility of suspended players taking cases to the courts on the basis of natural justice.

Other recommendations include: allowing appellants whose appeal is deficient in respect of the Irish language to amend their documentation/cheques without automatically losing their case; restriction of permits to play in New York to full-time students; abolition of the "home-based player" provision whereby Irish players could register in the North American Board area before May 1st and then travel backwards and forwards for the remainder of the summer.