DRA disappoints with fudge and stonewalling

After taking several steps forward in terms of discipline and law enforcement the GAA has recently gone backward with a couple of giant strides, writes Sean Moran

BRACED PERHAPS by the turbulence of office, GAA president Nickey Brennan was cautious when acknowledging the apparently significant strides taken by the association in the area of discipline. It was only a month ago and he mentioned in a prophetic aside that he realised all the encouraging improvement was just one controversy away "from going up in flames".

Concluding an interview with this newspaper he remarked: "Look, I'm around long enough to know that we can't say we have this thing cracked. Life doesn't work that way in the GAA. But things are improving."

As ever in these matters it's best to expect the worst but even the president's most downbeat instincts have been frazzled by the mayhem that has raged around the issue during July.

Paul Galvin's ultimately successful campaign to escape his prescribed punishment has been the longest-running and highest-profile of the disciplinary melodramas but Brennan's comments, during a robust defence of the association's right to use video evidence to pursue foul play even if match referees had already "dealt with" the matter, arose in respect of Colin Moran's case.

A barrister involved, on a voluntary basis, in an early DRA hearing told me that once his appeal had failed there would be no point in trying to test the matter in the High Court because the bar is set so high for the overturning of arbitration-tribunal findings where proper procedures have been followed.

In plain language the decision complained of would have to be crackers.

The Moran case sharply divided opinion - even among those who don't as a reflex believe players should get off regardless of the offence - and even the television stations disagreed, TV3 not dwelling on it during live coverage and RTÉ later highlighting it on the Sunday Game. The Dublin player's suspension might have been a hard call but there was nothing irrational about it.

For the DRA committee in question to reject all the procedural arguments and decide to revisit the facts of the case and readjudicate the foul was nothing short of staggering. Even Dublin's delegation were privately astounded to be allowed screen video evidence and couldn't believe the grounds on which they succeeded.

The High Court has in its time given out what could be deemed soft interim injunctions to players challenging suspensions, but it's hard to imagine any judge deciding to slip on a DVD and allow the facts of a matter already dealt with exhaustively by two committees (CHC and CAC) be revisited if their conduct had been found to be procedurally blameless.

The DRA was established to provide a quasi-legal forum and prevent recourse to the courts. In this it has been successful but the downside has been the steady flow of cases - which recent decisions will hardly stem - frequently based on no more persuasive grounds than chancing your arm in the hope something might shake out.

Given its arcane speciality, the DRA unsurprisingly isn't widely understood among the public at large any more than the workings of the courts would be.

As has been caustically observed, the GAA's founding fathers might well be taken aback to find that a decision (Royal British Bank v Turquand (1856) 6 E & B 327) handed down 28 years before the GAA was founded should be argued in a case concerning verbal abuse of one of the association's referees.

Then again Michael Cusack and company would presumably be equally baffled that the superior courts of a 21st-century republic are still presided over by judges in 18th-century apparel and populated by similarly garbed barristers. That, however, is the legal world with which the GAA is forced to interact simply because so many members refuse to accept its rules.

Earlier this year the DRA looked on the way to fulfilling its intended purpose, as an occasional forum for intractable disputes. The number of cases had fallen, as realisation dawned that the process was not some sort of a roulette wheel, worth a spin.

"With the passage of time and the publication of the decisions people knew the type of case and argument that would succeed at arbitration," was the justifiably upbeat view earlier this year of the DRA secretary Liam Keane. "The new enforcement of rules procedures (is) also working better than they're generally given credit for."

In the past few weeks, however, it is the DRA that has been disappointingly erratic. Aside from the dubious decisions in the Moran and Galvin cases there has been a failure to publish decisions in anything like adequate time. This had initially been one of the authority's great strengths: fully reasoned decisions (whether you agreed with them or not) up on the website within a few days. Yet the last decision to be forensically spelled out and promptly published was the refusal to amend the suspension of Monaghan's Paul Finlay nearly three weeks ago.

In relation to the Galvin case it is puzzling that the original decision was withheld on these grounds: "The full reasoned decision of the Tribunal will not be published until after the conclusion of disciplinary action against Mr Galvin in order not to prejudice those proceedings."

Never mind that it's now a week since the newly-assembled CHC decided to impose just half of the original six-month suspension but the withholding is curious given the decision had to be given to Croke Park so the authorities could address alleged procedural irregularities in the original hearing.

If the GAA had details of the DRA finding, who was left to be prejudiced by the publication of the decision? It's not as if a jury was being empanelled and liable to be swayed by details. Anyone involved in the process presumably had sight of the judgment.

This combination of contentious decisions and lack of clarity is corroding the very principle the GAA has been trying to uphold: a resilient connection between breaching rules and appropriate punishment.

The role of the DRA needs review. To date it has placed a considerable burden on a small number of volunteers but it has also involved greater numbers of arbitration panellists more fleetingly with the result problems of consistency have arisen.

It would be better to retain professionally a few panellists, who could expedite matters in a manner that can't be demanded of volunteers and avoid current uncertainties.

But realistically, and in fairness to the arbitration body, the main problem is that so many members and units of the GAA are determined to subject unremarkable and well-deserved suspensions to intense forensic scrutiny in the hope of evading the consequences of their misbehaviour.

smoran@irish-times.ie