Kieran McGeeney's Armagh got stuck into it again with Tyrone at the weekend and so disciplinary matters are at the forefront of his mind and the mind of journalists who get into contact with him.
McGeeney said rule makers pushing black cards (as well as orange cards and pink cards) are dancing around the central issue: the tackle. Until such a time as the tackle (and what constitutes a legitimate tackle) is properly defined, then their remedies are doomed to fail.
That is still going to haunt the GAA. We have black cards, yellow cards, orange and pink ones. We will look at the symptoms the whole time and try and get them every week.
Until someone looks at the actual cause of it - which is our tackling - then nothing is going to change.
Referees are going to have a hard job. They are always going on what they believe and they are trying to be objective about it. But I thought rules were there to be implemented. They tell us if the rules were to be implemented, there would be a free every ten seconds.
So why have rules? Why not go out and if you like a physical game, then let's have it.
McGeeney indicated that for some years now defending in the game of Gaelic football is essentially a numbers game, whereby one pressurises or crowds out an attacker until he fouls the ball or makes a mistake.
For years there, Tyrone perfected getting in around the ball and putting in loads of tackles. And now it's a free kick. There is no such free for having loads of men around even though there's no such rule when men are tackling the ball with an open hand. It's a legitimate tackle.
If you surround a man now with three or four players, it's a free. Even though it doesn't exist.
There remains no plausible, coherent means of dispossession in Gaelic football (ironically, Colm Cooper executed the rarest of things in last year's Munster football final - cleanly flicking the ball out of an attackers hand - and was penalised for it, to his intense frustration).
Defining a tackle will be some job. They've had since 1884.
Read also: Pictures Of The Latest Armagh/Tyrone Brawl
[Belfast Telegraph]
