This week's annual congress of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) has urgent business to conduct. In addition to the election of a new president to take over from Mr Joe McDonagh in a year's time, there is a raft of proposals to reform the rules of discipline within the association.
The GAA could scarcely have conjured up a more striking backdrop to the debate on these proposals than the catalogue of violent misbehaviour which has erupted in almost weekly instalments since the new year. This culminated last week in the jailing of a Galway club footballer for a serious assault during a match and the suspensions handed down after the events of the Westmeath-Wicklow NFL fixture in Mullingar where a player suffered a fractured cheekbone.
Relating such incidents to the reform proposals is in many ways a daunting process because even though the thrust of the rule changes is to combat indiscipline on the pitch and expedite disciplinary procedures off it, the problem of violence in the games goes deeper than any deficiency in the rules. The reforms may be impressive and generally well-thought-out but there are more fundamental problems within the environment of the GAA.
Referees in football and hurling are held in lower esteem than similar officials in any other sport. Some of this may be self-inflicted through inconsistent application of the rules but there is also a culture of disparagement which feeds the problem.
This extends to the enforcement of discipline at most levels of the games. Croke Park's Games Administration Committee is much reviled but frequently is just applying the rules as they stand. The ridiculous delay in processing investigations which sees the still incomplete inquiry into the Mullingar match drag into its seventh week, is something over which the Administration Committee has little control.
Some of the proposed rule changes address this problem by cutting back on the time-scales involved in submitting reports and exercising the right of personal hearing but units of the association must share the blame for the low levels of compliance within the GAA.
Whenever a player is brought before a disciplinary committee to answer charges of misbehaviour, his club or county frequently transgresses the boundary which separates legitimate concern for due process from mere obstructionism. It is not unknown for disciplinary bodies to be pilloried in public. It's nothing new for counties to connive at reducing the impact of suspensions by re-scheduling fixtures. Yet these same counties have to uphold and apply the rules within their own jurisdiction.
Like any other social or legal code, the rules of the GAA need to be more rigorously accepted and complied with by those subject to them - all elements within the association. If the upcoming proposals can help influence prevailing attitudes, a start will have been made.
If not, there will be difficulties. Last week's District Court case in Galway may not have been groundbreaking in terms of the interaction between sport and the criminal law but it constituted further evidence that the courts are losing patience with the notion that violence on the sports field is somehow more acceptable than if it occurred on the street.