Brian Gavin hasn’t had the best of luck in All-Ireland finals.

The Offaly referee had his nose split two years ago when Tommy Walsh flicked his hurl into a squabbling bunch of players in the midst of which was Gavin trying to keep order – necessitating the official having to have his face bandaged.

Last Sunday he was at the centre of some controversial calls but refereeing brings with it the same vulnerability to error as any other human activity and that has to be accepted.

Sunday did, however, again emphasise there are certain things the GAA could do to make the match official’s lot that bit easier.

The respective counties’ inventory of grievance from the weekend would be topped by, in Cork’s case, the additional injury-time played and in Clare’s, the fact they weren’t playing with a one-man advantage for three quarters of the match after Shane O’Neill struck Darach Honan on the head.

Gavin looked to be relying on his umpires for guidance in the latter incident and the consequence was a baffling yellow card for both players.

Without knowing what advice the referee received from his officials, it’s impossible to have a strong view on Honan’s yellow.

In the case of O’Neill, though, we know what we saw on video – clear striking – so either the referee was misinformed by his umpires or he made an incorrect decision.

O’Neill went on to be one of Cork’s – not exactly an extensive list – better players.

One of the less satisfactory undercurrents in a memorable hurling championship has been the slippage in disciplinary enforcement.

Part of the problem can be attributed to an incremental process over the past two and a half years.

Amended motion
The 2011 GAA annual congress in Mullingar passed an amended motion which proposed the abolition of the practice whereby yellow cards could be reviewed by the Central Competitions Control Committee if the relevant referee agreed.

Retired inter-county football referee John Bannon had initiated the idea at the previous year’s congress, proposing the CCCC act as a citing authority and leave referees out of it. The motion was not accepted.

When it re-surfaced 12 months later Bannon wasn’t optimistic but after consultation previous opponents of the motion agreed to support it if the citing role of the CCCC was dropped; in other words if a referee gave a mistakenly lenient yellow card nothing could be done about it because the matter would be viewed as having been dealt with.

After congress, then GAA president Christy Cooney was unconcerned by the implications: “I believe that the referee will make the decision as the right decision as they see it at the time. They’ll make that decision regardless of whether that’s an All-Ireland semi-final, quarter-final or the first round of the championship or an All-Ireland final.

“I don’t think a referee knowingly or consciously when they’re refereeing a game thinks ‘oh God, it’s an All-Ireland final next week’. I don’t think referees operate that way.”

Director general Páraic Duffy was less optimistic.

“There is a danger that a referee might give a yellow where he should have given a red,” he said. “We will look at those cases and we will look at appointments – referees who do that simply cannot be appointed.”

Exacerbating this problem was the reality that not only would the red-card offence go unpunished for the remainder of the match but the yellow card would effectively act as an indemnity against further review.

Deterrent
The greater the likelihood of an infraction being punished, the greater the deterrent. At present it's impossible to send off a player in a high-profile hurling match without it becoming a cause celebre. No wonder referees are reluctant to do so.

Then when they do, as has happened this year in the cases of Patrick Horgan and Henry Shefflin, they find themselves undermined by weak enforcement at committee level.

Yellow cards in the GAA have always constituted roughly as effective a deterrent as giving “a good piece of your mind” to drunken teenagers at the back of the house. It’s now been rendered worse in that they’ve become desirable in some circumstances, like an inoculation.

The slackening of the regulatory regime has to impact on player behaviour. Any temptation to play on the permissive tendencies of a referee is greatly discouraged by the nagging apprehension that video review may well nail you anyway.

It would also stiffen referees’ resolve, as they would know that diffident decision making on their part wouldn’t be the end of the matter. A citing protocol should be reintroduced to ensure that foul play is adequately discouraged.

There wasn’t too much fuss made about the long count in injury-time that allowed Clare to equalise and even Cork manager Jimmy Barry-Murphy magnanimously said that the draw was a fair result. But being an agent of karma should not be added to the list of a referee’s duties.

It’s more than two years – again, the 2011 congress – since the GAA decided to introduce a countdown clock for championship matches, which would spare referees the responsibility for time keeping. It was shelved for commercial reasons but resurrected at this year’s congress as part of the Football Review Committee’s proposals.

Ironically in the circumstances, the proposal wasn’t originally intended to apply to hurling but that has been rectified. So from next year, controversies like the weekend’s should become obsolete.

smoran@irishtimes.com