Tipperary are to adduce video evidence in Brian O'Meara's defence when the GAA's Games Administration Committee considers his red card offence next Monday. Unless there was a camera shooting from a remarkably different angle to that used by RT╔, Tipp would be better off destroying all such evidence rather than letting it flicker before the eyes of GAC.

Next week's disciplinary hearing could become a landmark case in the GAA's struggle to maintain some sort of discipline in its games.

There is nothing more emotive than the case of player about to miss an All-Ireland final - regardless of the rights and wrongs of the issue. Matters become even more complicated when the player involved is someone like Brian O'Meara whom no one would characterise as a mean-minded player - someone who despite having provided a valuable physical focus for the Tipperary attack over the years, has never misused his physique.

Saturday was apparently the first time he was sent off. If ever a regulatory panel could see a hard case setting sail for the shores of bad law, this is it. There have been calls for the referee, Pat Horan, to review his decision and admit he made a mistake. It's astonishing stuff. The only explanation can be that not everyone adding their voices to this consensus has actually seen the television footage.

In the slow-motion replay, O'Meara and Wexford's Liam Dunne swap a couple of blows: i.e. they are standing apart and propel hurls through the space separating their bodies to hit each other. They then converge and jab at each other more than once before linesman Pat Ahern intervenes to stop them and call the referee's attention to what has happened.

How Pat Horan could have interpreted the situation as anything other than an infringement of Playing Rule 5.1, "To strike or attempt to strike an opponent with a hurley, head, arm, elbow, hand or knee", is hard to understand. Maybe it could have been categorised as a breach of 5.4, the less serious offence of behaving "in any way which is dangerous to an opponent" but in either case, a straight red card is the prescription.

In recent times the GAA has been putting huge effort into trying to tighten up its enforcement of discipline. The training and testing of referees has been stepped up considerably and resources are being directed at bringing other officials, linesmen and umpires, up to an acceptable standard.

How successful this has been is a matter of dispute but if the report of the National Referees Committee, with its 100 per cent satisfaction with refereeing performances, is straight from the pen of Pollyanna, there has been an improvement in overall standards with a couple of high-profile exceptions.

Yet the environment in which referees must operate doesn't look like changing. The ambiguities of the football tackle continue to create mayhem in the awarding of frees and leave officiating so much a matter of interpretation that it's possible for a referee like Michael Curley to be excoriated in some quarters and praised in others - for the same performance, in the drawn Dublin-Kerry match.

During that same game, Dublin manager Tom Carr took to the field to abuse Curley verbally because he disagreed with what on video looked a sustainable decision. The referee then had to tolerate a torrent of reaction that included favourable reference to Carr's actions as having "lifted" the Dublin team and the baseless assertion that he had gone soft on Dublin after their manager's intervention.

Another of the best football referees - if not this year's best - Pat McEnaney, took charge of the replay and sent off Tomβs ╙ SΘ in a punishment no neutral would dispute. For having the temerity to send off the Kerry manager's nephew, the referee had to put up with Pβid∅ ╙ SΘ growling about referees with agendas.

And it's not just those directly involved who are letting passions govern their reason. McEnaney also had charge of one of the championship's most difficult matches, the All-Ireland quarter-final between Derry and Tyrone. After administering the most obvious of red cards to Peter Canavan he was roundly abused by some of the Tyrone supporters who then attracted the attention of a cordon of stewards when an empty drink carton was thrown at the linesman who had told McEnaney about the offence.

The partisan nature of intercounty competition has positive aspects in the sense of community and occasion it promotes but it also has an ugly, irrational side. This leads to blind loyalty and consequent, knee-jerk hostility to any objective opinions. Show a red card and you're anti-one county, express valid criticism and you're anti-another. Referees are permanently in the middle and that's not a role all GAA people can understand.

Referees shouldn't be above criticism and shouldn't expect star billing merely for doing their job competently, but surely there should be some balance in the way their essential function is treated. A change in attitudes has to come. This naturally involves disciplining those who disrespect a referee's authority - just as it should involve disciplining referees who commit flagrant errors on a regular basis.

Other sports administrations support referees even when their decisions are harsh or even plain unfair - for instance the Laurent Blanc suspension that cost the French defender a World Cup final appearance in Paris - but the GAA is currently being asked to undermine Pat Horan, a referee who did the right thing. No amount of lobbying, even from respected figures like Liam Griffin or the anecdotal evidence of anonymous "hurling men" should change that fact.

Finally, a more disturbing anomaly sprang to attention last weekend.

The stubborn refusal of the 1999 Disciplinary Rules Revision sub-committee to dispense with time-based suspensions and adopt match-based ones will return to haunt the GAA. Brian O'Meara would be playing in the All-Ireland if he had received the red card in the drawn match because there would have been sufficient time to serve the suspension.

Next weekend if a Galway or Derry footballer commits a red-card offence, incurring a four-week suspension, they'd be eligible for the final. Should a Kerry or Meath player commit exactly the same offence a week later they will miss the All-Ireland. (Already the football qualifier system has produced instances of players missing matches because their match is on a Saturday rather than a Sunday.) This is plainly nonsensical and needs to be changed before a genuine All-Ireland injustice is perpetrated.

Email: smoran@irish-times.ie