On Gaelic Games:Last weekend's 64 per cent was an impressive number and provides a sound platform for going forward, writes SEÁN MORAN.

GLASS SURVEYORS were plentiful in Cork on Saturday afternoon – half-full or half-empty? In a way the biggest surprise was that the experimental disciplinary rules came as close as they did to acceptance. In an organisation as averse to rules observance as the GAA can be at times, 64 per cent was an impressive number in support of change.

Sadly, it wasn’t enough and fell short of the required two-thirds majority. The anomaly that allows a crushing majority in favour of change to be thwarted because it’s not quite big enough was in the minds of many, as the annual congress broke after the morning session.

This isn’t an unusual or unique requirement. Weighted majorities are commonplace in areas such as company law, albeit only for exceptional items of business. It’s hard, though, to avoid the conclusion that as applied in the case of the GAA the precaution reflects concern about the lack of preparation and abbreviated concentration span of the traditional congress delegation.

In other words, rule changes shouldn’t be too easy to stampede through a bored congress – although experience has tended

to suggest that the default setting of an uninterested delegate is ‘no’ rather than ‘yes’.

It is, however, reasonable in these times of improved communication and more energetic promotion by the proponents of reform to suggest that 67 per cent is too high a benchmark for even safeguarded change.

In 1995, the Hurling Development Committee saw a package of reforms shot down after a debate that illuminated nothing more clearly than the stunning indifference of many delegates. The HDC vowed that this wouldn’t happen again and the GAA took note.

Seeds of reforms such as allowing Central Council to table proposals, thus allowing an advocacy outlet for the policy work groups in various areas, were sown and more immediately an aggressive approach towards selling ideas was adopted and helped gain acceptance at the London congress of 1996 for the hurling championship changes that allowed defeated Leinster and Munster finalists back into the All-Ireland.

These days, all significant reforms are relentlessly toured and explained and held up for examination and questioning. Whatever else could be said about Saturday’s debate, the subject matter was well known and had been widely debated. Few (you hesitate to say none) of the delegates would have been voting on the basis of a knee-jerk reaction to the reforms.

In these circumstances, it’s valid to argue that the bar shouldn’t be set as high as two-thirds of the delegates. But the hazards of the system were known before the debate and reservations about them aren’t at this stage going to advance the cause of discipline.

Tactically, the debate took a turn against the reformers when a mood for compromise, which emerged as soon as the proposals had been put to the floor by Disciplinary Task Force chair Liam O’Neill, went unexplored, as president Nickey Brennan cut off the possibility saying that he believed congress wanted to decide on the proposals without amendment.

This was despite virtual pleas from the Wicklow, Tipperary and Monaghan delegations to help free them from their mandates, imposed by clubs unhappy at the prospect of playing under the new rules, which had until now been trialled exclusively at inter-county level. All three wanted the experiment to be extended through this summer’s championship.

Both Meath’s Brendan Dempsey and Frank Murphy from Cork objected to a further period of experiment and Brennan moved the debate along saying that he disagreed with experimenting during the championship.

Certainly the arguments that you couldn’t have referees applying one set of rules at club level and another at county didn’t hold much water given there are frequently such differences, in relation to duration as well as – more significantly – whenever experimental provisions are trialled during the national leagues.

Although Brennan expressed his view as an opinion, it has regulatory backing. Rule 83 of the official guide only provides for experimental playing rules in non-championship competitions.

The reason why the glass is half-full is that the long haul is a familiar method of GAA reform. A variety of significant changes have made their way incrementally into the official guide, from the original ban on foreign games up to rule 42 on the use of Croke Park, gradually increasing levels of support that made the measures inevitable. Last weekend the disciplinary proposals crossed the Rubicon; there’s no going back.

The range and passion of the speakers in favour of the proposals indicated an impressive resolve to do something about the problems of cynical fouling.

Aside from a predictable conservatism amongst the current All-Ireland champion counties – Kilkenny despite a split vote in the county and Tyrone on the basis that the current rules, under which cynicism has flourished, are adequate – the main mandated opposition came from junior clubs, fretful that their benches wouldn’t be sufficiently populous to cope with a run of yellow cards.

Where will the GAA go from here? The association’s Director of Games, Pat Daly, correctly said earlier this week that the sin bin – jettisoned after an aborted trial in 2005 – would not be revived as an option to tweak the experimental rules.

The 10-minute removal of a player, no matter how key, is a meaningless punishment in games where teams reduced to 14 routinely win big matches. Unlike rugby, Gaelic games are not fixed-position sports with offside rules and an abundance of set pieces, so losing a player for a short amount of time will hardly cause a team to break stride.

The experimental rules will be back on the clár and with little enough tweaking.

Technological advances, as outlined by Liam O’Neill, will improve the preparation of referees by for example utilising hand-held devices to train officials in the making of instant decisions. Clubs will have to be reassured that discipline is as important to their game as it is to county teams’.

But one way or another – and whatever about Saturday’s battle – the war against cynicism is now looking a good bet to succeed.