On Gaelic Games:The controversy after the county semi-final between Loughrea and Mullagh needs to be addressed at national level, writes SEAN MORAN

YOU WONDER was it a conscious decision by Galway hurling to lose interest in winning things and specialise instead in controversy. The pages of the calendar have flown away as swiftly as in any old black and white film to signify what will shortly be a gap of 22 years since the county’s last senior hurling All-Ireland.

Despite almost perennial hopes that the statistical void could be filled, Galway have laboured on, apparently under a curse that it should be glitteringly successful at under-age and club levels, but incapable of translating that to the very highest stage.

Events of the past two weeks would make you wonder whether there is in fact a stringent karma at work, punishing Galway hurling for subverting the natural order.

If this is exaggerated it’s only because the very concept of “order” being natural within the GAA seems outlandish.

But ever since the madness of the Tony Keady affair 20 years ago – when the Galway centre back was suspended for playing without authorisation in the US and there followed wild talk about withdrawing from the All-Ireland and a consequent loss of focus on what was an eminently winnable semi-final against Tipperary, which would effectively have sealed a three-in-a-row – the county has become more renowned for the storms its hurling whips up off the field rather than on it.

Messy intrigue over managerial appointments, regular cycles of rising optimism dashed by under-achievement and occasional nastiness, as in the county final of three years ago, provided the soundtrack as the years rolled by.

Galway is not the only county affected by these issues and its teams are not conspicuously ill-disciplined on the field, but what has happened in recent days within the county is all wrong in respect of a critical area within Gaelic games.

Listeners to RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland yesterday would have heard the relaying of a YouTube recording of the abuse that rained down on referee Christy Helebert from spectators after the county semi-final between Loughrea and Mullagh.

That wasn’t the end of it either.

According to Helebert he was assaulted by a number of Mullagh players and officials. This was after he had awarded an injury-time free that decided the match in Loughrea’s favour. In the aftermath, Galway’s Competitions Control Committee proposed 48-week suspensions for three players – Conor Dervan, Davy Glennon and John Rafferty.

Having opted for a hearing, the players hit the jackpot with the suspensions actually imposed coming in at 12 weeks.

The hearings committee decided that the referee had been subjected to category IV offences – “minor physical interference with,” “threatening or abusive conduct to” or “threatening language to” a referee and the suspension was accordingly reduced.

The fine on the Mullagh club for the misbehaviour of their supporters was raised from a preposterous €200 to a scarcely less so €1,000 and the suspension of team officials Pete Finnerty and David Glennon senior remained at 12 weeks.

Given the prevailing difficulties with discipline and the endemic disrespect for the authority of referees, this leniency would have dispiriting enough, but it was accompanied by the unedifying spectacle of Mullagh more or less trading the fate of their players for co-operation in allowing the county final go ahead.

This was because parallel to the suspensions issue, the club was trying to overturn the match result on the spurious and speculative grounds that a suspended county official had helped in arranging the semi-final fixture in question.

The argument, which even if well-founded, would have been a transparently blatant attempt to evade defeat on the field by arguing a technicality that had no impact on the match, was found to be without substance by the county board and the Connacht Council.

Effectively – and officials didn’t argue this last week – the championship was then held up to ransom, as Mullagh pondered whether they should go to the GAA’s Disputes Resolution Authority and consequently hold up the county final as a bargaining counter in the disciplinary deliberations concerning their players.

Events did nothing to refute this perception.

With the players’ suspensions scaled back from the original one year, Mullagh announced they were dropping their objection to the semi-final.

The controversy has been hard on Loughrea and Portumna, who are chasing the first three-in-a-row All-Ireland club achievement in history, as they waited for the match to get the go-ahead. Maybe there should be some sympathy for the hurling board officials and their desire to get the senior final out of the way, but there was a bigger issue at stake and no provincial championship schedule to accommodate.

Failure to back referees who do unpopular things is one of the abiding blights on the GAA. It leads to cowed officials being reluctant to do the right thing when they see what happens to someone like Helebert, who stands his ground.

In the county there is a body of opinion that his refereeing career might be done either through official irritation at his forcing the issue or weary frustration on his part.

That is doubly unfortunate because there aren’t that many former intercounty players who commit themselves to taking up the whistle and why would they when the culture of respect and support is so inadequate?

Not surprisingly, Galway referees came out strongly in support of their man and threatened to withdraw their services, but few believed that they would pull the plug on the county final and yesterday came word that they wouldn’t strike but instead look for an investigation into what had happened.

Even if that were to happen, what could an investigation achieve that a referee’s report couldn’t?

The degrading of disciplinary obligations and a willingness to treat referees as lines of least resistance is something Croke Park may have to address at national level. What happened in Galway should have been open to review by higher authority.

Unfortunately, provincial councils are perceived as being too locally influenced to have the sort of status necessary to intervene in these matters. But if referees can’t get their rights vindicated locally, it’s a national issue for the GAA. Meanwhile Galway’s Gloomsday clock ticks to 22.