GAELIC GAMES:Central Council's motion, if passed, should lead to more consistency in the GAA's disciplinary process, writes SEAN MORAN

IT IS said that many years ago, one congress delegate, infuriated by the intransigence towards any idea that “smacked of a foreign code”, suggested that the GAA should stop playing with a round ball.

Things are more fluid these days and although there remains a needy tendency to want to compare Gaelic games with every other recreational activity in the world, by and large the association is happy enough to assess what happens in other sports and adapt any useful initiatives, which might improve football and hurling.

One of the items that has survived may actually be on borrowed time at this stage. The enforcement of specific match bans for indiscipline rather than the traditional time-based suspensions is to be debated at next month’s annual Congress under a motion put forward by Central Council.

This simple amendment to the rule book would go some distance to providing more consistency in the sometimes erratic councils of the GAA’s disciplinary processes.

It hasn’t attracted huge attention because focus tends generally to be on the procedures through which playing rules infractions are brought to account and how successfully those cases are prosecuted. As a result the effect of suspension can be overlooked unless it interferes with a really significant fixture.

As things stand, players’ punishments are measured out in terms of weeks – two, four, eight and in rare cases even greater periods. The scope for inconsistency and straightforward unfairness is obvious and has been visited over the years.

Taking a common four-week suspension, the divergent impact depending on circumstances has been extraordinary. The (Amnesty) poster boy for injustice in this respect has to be Westmeath’s Anthony Coyne.

On May 11th, 1997, Coyne lined out at wing forward for the county in a Leinster championship match against Wexford in New Ross. Eight minutes into the match Meath referee Séamus McCormack dismissed Coyne. It wasn’t an especially controversial decision but its consequences were and should have ensured that next month’s reform was entered into the rule book 13 years ago.

Westmeath drew that day with Wexford and won the replay a week later. The following week the team drew again, this time with Offaly – Tommy Lyons’s side on their way to a famous Leinster title – and then on June 7th, lost the replay. In all Coyne had missed all but eight minutes of four matches for his four-week suspension.

A few months later during a gloomy November NFL match in Parnell Park, Offaly defeated Dublin and brought to an end the management tenure of Mickey Whelan (now enjoying a happier second coming as Pat Gilroy’s coach) but a more grisly detail was reflected in the sight of Offaly officials trying under the shadow of a dropping night to locate a few missing teeth on the pitch.

An off-the-ball “altercation” between Offaly centre back Finbarr Cullen and Dublin’s 1995 player-of-the-year Paul Curran had ended in the former losing three teeth but with the referee unsighted.

Eventually the authorities got on top of what had happened and the old Games Administration Committee handed down a 12-week ban, as a result of which Curran missed all of three league matches in the new year as opposed to Coyne’s four-match championship expulsion on the basis of a suspension one third the size.

There were other examples of daftness under the system. Greg Blaney, the great Down centre forward and dual player, picked up a two-week suspension playing for the county in a drawn Ulster football championship match. He was back for the replay but in between, did indeed miss a match – but with the county hurlers, who hadn’t stood to benefit in the least from Blaney’s breaking the rules.

One crazy consequence that mercifully never came to pass was the possibility that two players in separate All-Ireland semi-finals could commit exactly the same foul and receive exactly the same punishment, sending-off and a four-week suspension, but the one who did it in the first match would be eligible to play in the final whereas the other wouldn’t.

It was a sign of the madness that, rather than embrace the idea of match bans, the GAA went through such extraordinary contortions to try to plug the obvious holes in these disciplinary procedures.

First there was the idea that December and January wouldn’t count for suspensions so that anyone picking up a lengthy ban couldn’t burn two months of it by simply having a very good Christmas.

Then came the – admittedly sensible in itself – stipulation that a player would have to miss at least one match should his team not be in action during the period of the imposed suspension, so as to avoid the appalling vista of the potential All-Ireland semi-final anomaly.

One of the arguments against the match-based suspensions has its roots in one of the most problematic aspects of Gaelic games: multi-eligibility. Accordingly it would be argued that in the Blaney case it would be unedifying for him to be seen playing with one team when he stood suspended for something done with another.

This has largely been addressed with recognition in the rule book that only the most serious categories of indiscipline should result in a player being unavailable for all teams as opposed to the playing grade in which the infraction had taken place.

Next month’s proposal is a trial for intercounty teams with the proviso that it be extended to cover club teams after two years should the experiment prove satisfactory. That really goes without saying, as the vast bulk of club players line out for just one team so there isn’t any great agonising over what matches they have to miss.

You can never be sure what way Congress is going to swing on matters relating to discipline. A latent fear seems frequently to beat within the breast of every Gael that anything that advances the cause of discipline may automatically disadvantage their team. But the logic of this motion is irrefutable.

Interestingly next month’s congress takes place in Mullingar, site of the fourth match missed by Coyne during his epic incarceration of 14 years ago. Someone should put up a plaque.