Seán Moran welcomes the recommended solutions to sort out some of the discipline problems that have dogged the GAA

For such a vibrant sports organisation the GAA creates an inordinate amount of dubious, off-field publicity for itself because of the enforcement of its rules. In recent years there have been welcome signs that this is being recognised.

Outgoing president Seán McCague was sufficiently dismayed by events last year to empanel a high-powered sub-committee to recommend solutions. The result was published yesterday and deserves praise for the thoroughness of its deliberations.

It is the latest in a series of measures taken by the GAA to sort out discipline, rules and enforcement. The Disciplinary Sub-Committee of four years ago moved in the right direction and the centralising of authority over championship matches and the appointment of referees has played its part in the healthier state of affairs.

If the current report had to deal with major themes, these were the integrity and good sense of the enforcement system below national level and the extent to which rules have been ignored or bent in the headlong rush by members or units to secure any sort of an edge.

One of the matters that bodies such as this have to concern themselves with isn't merely the best practice but the chances of getting proposals past the GAA's annual congress. Accordingly some of the reforms are a bit anaemic but all of them at least move in the right direction.

The most obvious anomalies have been addressed. There are genuine concerns in the organisation about players guilty of violent conduct being allowed to play a week later, albeit for their club or county rather than the level at which the offence was committed.

But it still would have been better to go further down the road of match-based suspensions, if only to protect the rights of completely uninvolved team-mates at those other levels.

Realpolitik also seems to have dictated that the Munster Council - and other provincial councils - be allowed hang on to certain jurisdiction over championship matches despite the ridiculous decision of last summer when Cork's bringing on of six replacements was rubber-stamped in defiance of the rules.

But at least the area of replacements, source of relentless confusion in the past 18 months, has been tidied up with blood substitutes now entitled to be drawn from the whole panel rather than the first 20. The ideal solution would have been to allow inter-change players as in International Rules but that went the way of many solutions at the SRC special congress last October.

Where will the report's recommendations go from here? There are conflicting precedents about the best way of handling such proposals. The Hurling Development Committee successfully sold the radical championship shake-up of 1996 a year after suffering a series of catastrophes at the previous congress.

But four years later the football equivalent got rubbed out despite an exhaustive whistle-stop tour of county boards.

It would be a good idea for the Disciplinary Rules and Procedures sub-committee to tour this particular album. It contains a great deal of common-sense solutions to problems that are already out there as well as ones lurking in the undergrowth.

Answering any queries and allaying reservations would be more easily done on a county-by-county basis rather than on the floor at congress. Like many reforms before it, this report isn't perfect. It tacks around certain problems for pragmatic reasons but like many such previous proposals within the GAA it improves matters and moves things in the right direction.

It is rarely a preoccupation of those who shoot to ribbons proposed reforms but the most obvious question about this report is: if you don't agree with its recommendations how would you tackle the problems it addresses? It would be hard in the circumstances to do a better job.