IMPROVING disciplinary rules and regulations? No question about it, the GAA certainly talked a good game on that score last week. The old chestnut about making serial yellow-card merchants liable for suspension is not merely up for discussion yet again, it's apparently top of the agenda. That other eternal favourite, replacing timespecific suspensions with match-specific bans, will also be chewed over. Not that the sub-committee charged with examining these issues will be doing so merely for the sake of it, Liam Mulvihill was quick to emphasise.

"What comes out of it will come before this year's Congress. This is not just a talking shop."

To which the obvious response is that the proof of the pudding will, as ever, be in the eating. Sometimes the road to stasis is paved with good intentions and New Year's resolutions.

Whether the Frank Murphy-chaired sub-committee will or should propose the same changes - if any - for both codes is another matter. That hurling at any rate is a cleaner and safer game than it was two decades ago is not open to question. Will we ever see another All Ireland final to compare with 1987's rancid encounter? Never say never, but it's highly doubtful.

Willie Barrett, who refereed at intercounty level from the mid-1980s to 2003, witnessed a sea-change during his time officiating. His career began at a stage when what he describes as "famous corner-backs" were two a penny. It ended after the species had become all but extinct. They died out, Barrett contends, as a result of the force of will of the powersthat-be.

"When I started off, I often felt that if you sent off a player, that was nearly the end of your career, " he recalls.

"Whereas in later years, if you left a fella on that you should have sent off, it was the end of your career. That was a major turnaround, and it all came from the top."

Paraic Duffy and Dan McCartan are the men that Barrett identifies as the pathfinders on this disciplinary road to Damascus. "They were in charge of the committee at the time, were always on to the referees and they insisted that we apply the rules across the board. That's basically how the game became cleaner. And of course we then felt far more comfortable going out to referee matches, knowing that if we sent off a player we'd be supported all the way.

"It got to the stage during the last few years I refereed that my big worry was missing a guy striking, or not giving him a red card when I should have. That's when you were in trouble: for not being strict enough."

The decline of the hard man in hurling is one reason why Barry Kelly, who refereed last year's All Ireland final, is unsure about the wisdom of introducing suspensions for cumulative yellow cards. It's not the principle that he's against, it's the relevance.

Kelly "honestly can't name" any wellknown intercounty hurler who could be classed as a serial offender. "Outbreaks of indiscipline in hurling are relatively few and far between. At the top level you might get 26 frees in a match, which isn't a lot. So though I can see the logic of suspending a player who incurs several yellow cards, I'm not sure there's a need for it. And while the introduction of red and yellow cards was great - it made things clear cut for everyone - I'm also not sure we need to down the road of always copying other codes."

If the authorities do want to try and attach more meaning to yellow cards, Kelly adds, "there's probably a case for saying that a certain number of bookings incurred by a team in the one match should result in sanctions - and there'd be a stronger argument for this in football than in hurling. As it is, a manager can send out a team with a defence that commits six over-the-top tackles in the space of 70 minutes without suffering any consequences." Be reduced to 14 men for the remainder of the game following a fifth or sixth booking? Something along those lines, perhaps.

In contrast to Kelly, Aodán Mac Suibhne, a member of the disciplinary subcommittee that had its first meeting at Croke Park last Friday night, is in favour of action on cumulative yellow cards. "This would place responsibility on a player for his own actions, " Mac Suibhne believes. "As it is, a player can walk a tightrope in match after match, pushing the rules to the limit, knowing just how far he can go and always stopping short of getting sent off. And because referees don't referee the same teams in successive matches at intercounty level, there's no element of victimisation present. If a player is booked by a number of different referees in a short space of time, it's not that they're out to get him. He's the problem, not them."

Both Mac Suibhne and Kelly say yes to match-specific rather than timespecific bans. "It's a real no-brainer, " Kelly asserts. As part of his argument he cites the case of his fellow Westmeath man Anthony Coyne, who back in 1997 was sent off for a less than heinous offence against Wexford in the Leinster SFC preliminary round in New Ross. The game ended in a draw.

Coyne missed the replay six days later, then missed the match with Offaly the following weekend, which also ended in a draw, and also missed the replay a fortnight later. If ever a foul merited a one-match ban, Coyne's was it. Instead it triggered an instance where the timespecific punishment far outweighed the crime.

Common sense says that counties would be less likely to indulge in rulebook arabesques in the event that match suspensions replaced time-specific suspensions; there's a difference between losing Anthony Lynch for a Munster final replay and losing him for a Munster final replay and an All Ireland quarter-final.

Common sense also suggests that referees would be less squeamish about applying the ultimate deterrent if they knew that the man they were sending off would miss the next match rather than the next month or two; irrespective of Willie Barrett's education in the area of zero tolerance, it's hard to believe that such considerations didn't play a part in the decision of his colleagues not to send off TJ Ryan and Waterford's Eoin Kelly for blatant redcard offences during the 2004 Munster championship.

The Luddites and the troglodytes will always be with us, of course.

Depressingly, The Irish Times mentioned the other day that among the objections offered at Congress two years ago to the introduction of suspensions for serial yellow-card offenders was the alleged difficulty of "the maintenance of records". The GAA can rebuild Croke Park but they can't keep track of who gets booked in what fixture? Jesus wept.

Still, as Paraic Duffy and Dan McCartan showed Willie Barrett, where there's the will there's a way.