An intercounty manager put it succinctly at the weekend: "It's a cultural thing. Everyone wants discipline, but not too much of it." Like St Augustine who wished for chastity and continence - but not just now, the Gaelic games community has difficulty with the logical consequences of virtue.

Sometimes this expresses itself in the obsession with "manliness" - often to be contrasted with the dubious masculinity of other sports, especially soccer - which generally crops up as a euphemism for breaking the rules of play. In such discussions the winning point can be scored by the exasperated exclamation: "It's a physical game!"

Another telling riposte is the minimalist, "Ahh, no one was hurt!". Then there's the "one rule beats all" theory: "They're only amateurs." This roughly means that adherence to Rule 12 of the Official Guide, Part One obviates the need to observe Part Two (the playing rules).

Maybe it's psychological conditioning. Listen out for callers to radio programmes bitterly disputing the disciplining of their team or grudgingly accepting (although in such cases the offence generally needs to be the stock-in-trade of the Central Criminal Court), before launching a barrage of what-aboutery that details unpunished actions by opponents.

If every argument for leniency were to be accepted, hardly any players would be suspended. Certainly it's nearly impossible for a player to be suspended for an All-Ireland final without creating a firestorm of criticism and special pleading.

This happened with Tipperary's Brian O'Meara in 2001 and Dublin's Charlie Redmond before his club, Erin's Isle, contested the 1998 All-Ireland final.

Two years ago the prospect hovered over referee Michael Monahan, who decided against red-carding Armagh's John McEntee at the end of the All-Ireland semi-final against Donegal. Whatever his reasons, the knowledge that he would have been condemning a player to missing the final must have crossed his mind.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that for a player's All-Ireland suspension to be consensual, someone would have to die or at least lose several of his faculties, mental and physical.

We got an excellent snapshot of the prevailing mentality when the GAA tried to introduce some experimental disciplinary rules earlier in the year. The idea of a sin-bin got only a few weeks in January before a belligerent chorus of intercounty managers, whose players had run foul of the provisions, convinced the less-than-resolute authorities to back down.

In its place came the provision that a yellow card meant the player would take no further part in the match, but that he could be replaced. This was so draconian as to raise the suspicion that it was never intended to become permanent - and sure enough the concept never even appeared on the congress agenda.

The "debate" on yellow cards frequently featured the sometimes-wilful confusion of violent misconduct and foul play. "He's not a dirty player," was often used in defence of a player who had come a cropper under the new yellow-card rules.

All players, however, commit fouls. You don't have to be psychotic to be cynical. Rules are meant to prevent unfair advantage accruing to teams who break them. A tugged jersey can influence an outcome just as much as a punch. Both have to be discouraged.

The experimental rules are only a couple of months in the rear-view mirror and already a warm nostalgia is emerging. Unfeasible numbers are declaring that they favoured the original sin-bin proposal all along. The prospect of it being revived has even been canvassed recently. Make us virtuous, but not yet.

Last Sunday saw the best football match of the championship to date, the Dublin-Meath clash at Croke Park. Although it didn't have the sulphurous waft of many previous meetings between the counties, the match still managed to produce four unpunished red-card offences. (You could make a metaphysical point about the number, in that, had Ciarán Whelan been sent off within seconds of the throw-in for throwing a punch at Nigel Crawford, he wouldn't have been there for Anthony Moyles to stamp on in the second half.) As well as the above incidents, there were also Graham Geraghty's dangerous, head-high challenge on Conal Keaney and Niall Kelly's lunge and dig at Paul Casey.

What was surprising was that referee John Bannon is usually zero-tolerance and always enforces the rules on fouling, however vexatious some find his rigour. But you got a sense he had fatally compromised himself by showing lenience to Whelan.

The matter was the subject of an interesting discussion on last weekend's The Sunday Game. In the course of some general comments on discipline and the dispensing of cards, panellist Tony Davis said: "Referees don't really want to send somebody off - it has to be really bad. I don't think they want to destroy the game."

This describes a commonplace sentiment: that sending off players ruins matches.

But foul play ruins matches. No one on serious reflection wants to encourage foul play, but not everyone is willing to accept the measures necessary to curtail it.

The newly-appointed central disciplinary committee (CDC) is quite early in its existence to have its nerve tested.

But that's what's happened. Last Sunday's match, together with the Kildare-Westmeath fixture a week previously, featured unacceptable incidents that were inadequately punished.

Speaking to this newspaper only last week, the chair of the CDC, Con Hogan, said his committee would not refuse - as the old GAC had - to implement the authority, granted by Central Council in July 2002, empowering it to overrule yellow cards handed out by referees and impose suspensions if video evidence shows there to have been a red-card offence.

"Our position is that normally we will not be using that power," said Hogan, "but if we feel the need to take action we will do so. We don't want to re-referee every match, but there will be a sanction for serious foul play and ultimately that will be the message."

That message is vital, because there is too little fear of the consequences of breaking the rules. Whoever pole-axed Dessie Dolan the week before last was taking a calculated risk that he wouldn't pay the full price for his action, and the absence of video evidence has ensured that the gamble paid.

If the message does go out that players who hit opponents will be punished, it will have an impact.

Firstly, players will be less inclined to do so, and secondly referees will be under less pressure to fudge the issue given that suspensions will be incurred regardless of their leniency.

So the first big test for the CDC will have major implications for the GAA.