On Gaelic Games:The momentum for change on the discipline front within the association has been thrown into reverse gear, writes SEAN MORAN

LAST WEEK GAA president Christy Cooney informed journalists attending the All Stars selection meeting that Central Council had decided the previous weekend that it wouldn’t be necessary to bring forward new proposals on discipline to next year’s congress.

They had reached this decision, apparently, because of the “outstanding” sportsmanship exhibited during this year’s championship.

Who would have thought this autumn had been so mellow that the association’s highest authority, as far as we know uninfluenced by narcotic transports, could have come up with such a view of the world it administers?

Admittedly, the annual schlockfest moments that the club championships reliably provide hadn’t kicked into top gear, although there would be enough shudder-inducing episodes last weekend. But even allowing for the relative tranquillity of the moment, what was the basis for describing the state of sportsmanship as so elevated as not to require further attention?

Could it have been the season’s showpiece occasions, last month’s All-Ireland finals? The hurling was a ferociously contested match, by common consent the best final for a decade, but just as it demonstrated a good deal of what is best in the game it also contained plenty of the worst. Refereed by Cork official Diarmuid Kirwan in a laissez-faire fashion, it featured a litany of unpunished fouls with the rules of the game mostly waived for the afternoon.

A conservative estimate is Kirwan could have awarded twice as many frees, but neither side held back and were evidently consenting adults. In the circumstances, who can blame a referee? If he effectively allows the teams to regulate themselves he gets commended for his non-intervention. If he lays down the rules he runs the risk of being blamed for “ruining” the match.

How can there be consistency when rules no longer apply? What if one team doesn’t consent to the waiver and prefers the protection of the Official Guide as established by the GAA? For most people such a situation would suggest anarchy rather than sportsmanship – “outstanding” or otherwise.

Then there was the football final. Kerry footballer Tadhg Kennelly has eventually disowned comments attributed to him in his recently autobiography, Unfinished Business.

He may not have intended, as inadvertently claimed in the chapter he forgot to proof-read, to hit the first Cork player he got the opportunity to hit. But, by his own revised admission, he was “too pumped up” and the challenge on Nicholas Murphy “over the top”. Yet, even with the power to review the situation, the authorities did nothing to address it.

Maybe the undeniable emotiveness of Kennelly’s story prompted the leniency. But the episode was hardly an example of outstanding sportsmanship, however it’s spun.

What can be said is that this year’s championship season passed without major disciplinary controversy – no outbreaks of lawlessness sufficient to create outrage nor a litany of recourse to the Disputes Resolution Authority. But where, exactly, is the evidence that this represents a paradigm shift in the biggest issue affecting the association as opposed to a quiet few months in Dodge City?

In fact, little has changed since last April’s congress in Cork took so seriously the state of indiscipline that it voted in favour of a radical package of measures to confront the challenge – failing only narrowly to secure the necessary two-thirds majority by eight votes, 177-100.

Commenting afterwards, new president Cooney said: “They got a 63.8 per cent majority so it’s obvious that there’s a serious mood for change. We’ll reflect on this decision before deciding what to do next.” What in fact happened next was that the momentum for change was thrown into reverse gear.

During the national league experimentation with rules designed to counter deliberate fouling and cynicism, the group that had formulated the trial conducted weekly briefings adducing statistical evidence, such as the decline in fouling, to support their initiative.

Disappointed by the outcome at congress but buoyed by the overwhelming evidence of a mood for change, members of the by then dissolved disciplinary task force continued to comment and advocate change in order to maintain the momentum for reform.

Yet, little over a month after congress the task force chair, Liam O’Neill, revealed in this newspaper that he had been asked to stop commenting on indiscipline.

It’s not clear why this was done, but there was little evidence to support the emergence of “outstanding” levels of sportsmanship in the early weeks of the championship.

In Munster, the Tipperary-Limerick football first round contained over 50 frees, as did the previous week’s Fermanagh-Down match in the Ulster championship. Derry-Monaghan produced 11 yellow cards and one red.

In hurling, early May saw a league final between Kilkenny and Tipperary that foreshadowed with uncanny accuracy the counties’ All-Ireland encounter: exciting, charged and at times completely unregulated.

There is great ambivalence on the issue of discipline within the GAA. For some, if a match is entertaining then it doesn’t matter whether the rules have been applied or not.

But that’s not the way those most closely involved in the games view the situation. The vote last April showed the extent of the concern among delegates, and, during the extensive consultative process that led to last year’s GAA Strategic Plan, the top three concerns voiced by ordinary members were: consistent application of rules, less tolerance for foul play and greater respect for officials.

Solid, statistics-based evidence isn’t the weapon of choice for everyone in the GAA, but it’s the only rational basis for progress.

It has been pointed out that the GAA didn’t drop the idea of disciplinary reform but rather deferred it for a year. That’s the better part of two years away, by which stage the trail will have gone quite cold.

You’d expect there’d be a very good explanation for such a disruption. The “outstanding” sportsmanship of the season just gone can’t possibly be that explanation.