‘The referee is effectively the judge and jury’

A CALL by the GAA’s ‘Head of Games’ Pat Daly for a modern approach to discipline, that would be effective in classifying various playing offences, is certain to go unheeded, he conceded yesterday.

Nevertheless, he holds strongly to the view that there is a definite need for an independent tribunal to administer discipline and apply sanctions on a more consistent and equitable basis.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Games Administration Committee, Tony O'Keeffe, accepts that under current rules they have 'no discretion' in the way they impose penalties.

"Pat Daly is going back into the very philosophy of what our disciplinary system should be. There are set penalties for set offences and he's saying that is bad law. But, the GAC's hands are tied. There are some people who would feel the same way as Pat Daly, that we have to re-examine the whole philosophy of our disciplinary code,'' he commented.

While accepting that certain people (including GAA President Sean Kelly) favour an independent tribunal, Mr O'Keeffe feels it isn't necessary "to go to that extreme". At the same time, he favours one that would obviate the need for people to resort to the law.

"For your normal day-to-day discipline, you have a very difficult situation at the moment whereby the disciplinary tribunal has really no discretionary powers. Once a person is charged in accordance with a referee's report the penalty is mandatory. Pat is calling for a radical overhaul of the system and there would be a small body of opinion that would be supportive of that. He talks about 'intent' and 'gravity' and a whole lot of other things, but there is no room for those in the present rules.''

Pat Daly accepts that players are often entitled to feel 'hard done by.'

"If a referee says that you kicked somebody, that's it you've had it for six months,'' he states. "The referee is effectively judge and jury.''

The independent tribunal he favours would be made up of people who don't have 'vested interests' and don't represent counties or provinces.

"At present, we've two disciplinary systems within the Association one for GAC and one for breaches of the anti-doping code which, fortunately, has never been called into action. When that committee was set up, there was a huge emphasis at the time on having an independent body. Basically, you were getting legal personnel, people from the medical world and people from the world of pharmacology who would have some GAA background, but would be deemed to be independent.

"If they were ever to sit on a case, they would have to be independent in terms of natural justice and in terms of the human rights act and a whole host of other things. Justice can only be done if you have a situation where you have independence, consistency and proportionality. We don't have independence at the moment, but that's nobody's fault.

"It's just that the GAC system has pre-dated a lot of legislation that came on stream subsequently. The make-up of the GAC has never changed to reflect current legislation in terms of human rights, natural justice and due process. I believe the time is right to look at the make-up of the GAC, to ensure that sanctions are imposed on a consistent basis and that you don't have situations where one guy gets a yellow card and another gets three months for the same offence or a lesser offence. The third thing is proportionality, where the sanction fits the actual offence.''

His argument is that because of the way the system operates, demarcation lines between rough play, dangerous play and kicking are vague.

And, the fact that the suspension system involves time and a game (penalty), or time only, he feels that anomalies and contradictions are practically inevitable.

Tony O'Keeffe isn't so sure about the merits of another proposal made by Pat Daly that a sin bin should be introduced to Gaelic Games.

The question he poses is: "What is a sin bin for? Are we going to follow the rugby scene where a guy gets a yellow card. The gravity of our yellow card in my opinion doesn't compare with the gravity of the yellow card in rugby, which is used very sparingly. The yellow card in Gaelic games is used very much as a deterrent rather than as a punishment.

"There is an argument that if you use the yellow card as it's used in rugby it would lead to a cleaning up of the game, but I'm not so sure. When the cards were introduced first in our games, it certainly helped towards making the game more free-flowing, but I think that is not now the case, players seem to have got used to the idea.''