Forget about the tussle in the tunnel in Thurles; the subsequent (proposed) sanctions are as tokenistic as they are justified. As more than one player said last Sunday, there wasn't a foul stroke for the rest of that game. If only we could say the same about Ballybofey.

There were 55 frees in that Donegal-Armagh game, more than twice the number there was in Cork-Clare. The previous week the nation was subjected to two other foulfests. Tyrone and Fermanagh had 51 frees. Mayo and Galway had 60. And these were so-called glamour games featuring teams who have all made All Ireland semi-finals in recent years, games pundits wanted to open the championship instead of charming little dramas like Longford and Westmeath and Cavan and Down.

You remember what some pundits said about those games, accusing teams of "naive" defending. Was part of their naivety their low foul counts?

For years now the Tribune has been bemoaning the plague that is tactical fouling in football. Last Sunday it was finally addressed by someone from within the game. In his analysis for the BBC's The Championship, Jarlath Burns highlighted players, some of them old Armagh teammates, deliberately hauling down opponents outside the scoring zone. He even had a term for it, one from the vernacular of the dressing room. "The Stopman."

There was, of course, some excellent defending in Ballybofey, but as the high foul count reveals, there was some woeful tackling and deliberate fouling too. Often, they go hand in hand. Last year on Park Live, the Ulster GAA writer, Des Fahy, accused the media of anti-northern bias for their condemnation of Tyrone's tackling in the 2003 All Ireland semi-final. But it wasn't the famous swarm that we objected to, rather Tyrone's 32 fouls in the second half, most pointedly Ryan McMenamin's blatant Stopman on Colm Cooper.

Kerry themselves have resorted to Stopman. Most top teams do. Yet the authorities have never intervened.

Either they do not know the game, or they do not care about it.

This year's Congress suggests it is not the latter. In their respective addresses, Liam Mulvihill and Nickey Brennan speculated on the potential of the game, with Mulvihill rightly saying the aspiration should be to have more games like last year's epic All Ireland quarter-final between Kerry and Armagh.

With the rules the way they are now though, the chances of that have been reduced.

The new ticking system tolerates . . . even encourages . . .more fouling. So does the refusal to have even a debate on the merits of a team fouls rule like in basketball. At Congress Brennan advocated the establishment of a football development officer but it's a football development committee that's required.

The GAA tried to state last week that it's serious about discipline. But until the average free count in football is in the low 30s instead of its current average of 43, until it stops the Stopman, we know it isn't.