Seán Moran/On Gaelic Games:The GAA would be in terrible trouble were all its difficulties and challenges to prove as demanding as the issue of indiscipline.
Considering the effort and resources that have gone into trying to establish a reliable connection between breaking rules and punishment, the situation should have been solved many times over by now.
Last week the GAA expressed a degree of satisfaction with some recent statistics relating to discipline, including a drop in the number of red cards issued in this year's championship to date. The trouble with such data is that it is really value-neutral.
If on-field discipline has improved to the extent that referees' interventions aren't required as frequently, that's plainly good news, but otherwise it's like the story of the overenthusiastic handyman (an acquaintance of a family I knew in my youth) who used to boast that his home-made fuses never blew.
After a troublesome start to the season, featuring the Cork-Clare suspensions and the failure to use video evidence against other miscreants, things have undoubtedly quietened down, but there is a still a creeping sense that when even moderately sized disciplinary challenges arise there is a reluctance to deal with them.
And what more daunting task is there for a disciplinary committee than to suspend someone for an All-Ireland final?
The GAA now faces this prospect on two fronts: Dublin under-21 hurler Peadar Carton and Cork footballer Noel O'Leary. The latter is the more prominent case and embodies the embarrassingly inconsistent season the authorities have had.
But the first is even more damning. Originally suspended for - at best - a dangerously reckless swing at Tipperary's Paul Curran, which broke the opposing player's jaw and - given the tight margins involved - possibly cost Tipp a place in the All-Ireland semi-finals, Carton is still, so to speak, at large.
Firstly his case wasn't processed in time to prevent an appearance in the Leinster under-21 final against Offaly, during which he scored an important goal. Then, having been suspended for eight weeks, he benefited from an appeal, which was accepted on "technical" grounds by the Central Appeals Committee.
There were still no particular grounds for further concern, because the whole case was referred back for rehearing, and had that been expedited no additional harm would have been done.
But despite there being over a week between this decision and Dublin's All-Ireland semi-final against Derry, nothing was done and Carton played again and once more scored a goal.
The matter is back under consideration and there are nearly three weeks to go to the under-21 final, but it looks likely to be scrapped over all the way to the Disputes Resolution Authority (DRA) if necessary.
Dublin had their choice on this matter. Had Carton's suspension been accepted from the start, he could have served the suspension and still got back for the All-Ireland, providing the team had qualified in his absence.
If they wouldn't have been able to get by without him, it makes the whole business even worse because it means Dublin won a Leinster title by speciously exploiting rules and procedures intended to ensure fair play.
Should Carton somehow beat the rap and play in an All-Ireland final, the GAA and all members who value fairness - and that includes any Dublin hurling enthusiasts I have spoken to - will rightly be in despair.
The facts of the O'Leary case are similarly beyond dispute. The Cork wing back punched Meath's Graham Geraghty during Sunday's All-Ireland semi-final. Referee Brian Crowe, attending to another matter, didn't see the blow, but his attention was drawn to it by the linesman on that side of the field. We don't know what advice he received, but Crowe issued a yellow card when obviously a red card would have been the appropriate response.
It was open to the Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC) - at the time of writing their decision isn't known - to ask the referee to review the evidence and indicate whether he was happy with the yellow card. Were he not happy, a charge of striking could be pursued against O'Leary by the CCCC should the committee so decide.
This was an unwelcome development for the CCCC, which hasn't shown huge appetite for following up on these matters. One of the central ironies to what happened is that Geraghty has been one of the beneficiaries of this reluctance.
The other is that one of the few players to have had his collar felt in this regard during the summer is O'Leary, who got involved in a tangle with Kerry's Paul Galvin in the Munster final and was seen to kick out.
O'Leary served his suspension in the qualifiers. If lightning strikes twice, he'll miss an All-Ireland final. Of course if he'd got the appropriate red card on Sunday he'd still be missing the final, but Cork would need to have reached it a man short for nearly an hour of the semi-final.
A clear case? Certainly. A hard case? Given the season's inconsistencies, maybe.
It might be possible to develop a mercy jurisdiction for certain situations beyond its current limited basis but for the certainty that it would be abused within an inch of its existence. There would be no temperance in the rush to squeeze such a facility for everything it had.
You only have to look at the reaction to clear-cut cases of suspension and the interminable pursuit of every remedy to know that the mindset of the typical GAA unit isn't likely to discriminate between circumstances deserving of a compassionate hearing and those that aren't.
Derry's Paddy Bradley shot the lights out against Dublin in the recent All-Ireland football quarter-final but shouldn't have been playing. Earlier this year he got a 12-week suspension for jostling a referee in a club match - on his own admission. "I grabbed the referee to get his attention; I didn't grab him to hit him," he told the Sunday Independent last May.
In a decision that has implications for the GAA's disciplinary structures in smaller counties, the DRA ruled that the presence of a club colleague of the referee on the committee that handed down the suspension had compromised the decision and it was referred back to Derry.
Having caused turmoil in the county by suspending the county's most prolific forward just before the championship, local officials not unnaturally suffered a collapse of resolve when they found the whole matter back on their desks and so the balance of the suspension (Bradley had already served seven weeks) evaporated into the ether.
With great matches on the immediate horizon it's depressing to reflect that, for all the effort that has gone into the broader disciplinary framework, Gaelic games remain effectively lawless because of a situation in which it's a lottery whether foul play leads to punishment.
