Had a GAA referee been called upon to adjudicate on the infamous Ronan O'Gara-Duncan McCrae incident in the 2001 Lions Tour, he'd have scrutinised it for a while and ultimately settled the matter by sin-binning both players.
We don't know where it states in the GAA rulebook that if two players are involved in a brawl you must in all cases show both a yellow card regardless of the one-sided nature of the row, but clearly, it must be there.
We've seen several dazed looking punchbags clamber to their feet after a vicious pummeling only to receive the same punishment as the man who has spent the last 50 seconds punching them.
We may be getting a one-sided view of the Eoin Kelly-Barry Coughlan incident from yesterday's Waterford hurling final from these replays.
Ballygunner destroyed Passage by seventeen points to claim their third county championship victory in a row. Eoin Kelly, inter-county stalwart for years and years, and formerly of Mount Sion, was on the losing side yesterday.
He was emphatically on the winning side in the scrap with Ballygunner's Coughlan, pinning him on the ground and fixing him with blow after blow from above.
As he was torn off Coughlan by nearby Ballygunner players, he somehow managed to bring Coughlan's helmet with him.
The hurling rule 5.20 stipulates that it is a straight red card offence "to behave in any way which is dangerous to an opponent,including to deliberately pull on, take hold of a faceguard or any other part of an opponent’s helmet."
Despite the blatant and obvious red card infraction from Kelly, the referee - you guessed it - handed out yellow cards to both players.
Perhaps the referee Michael O'Brien looked at the clock in the corner and decided to institute the Tommy Carr rule. Namely, that you can't send off a player in the opening minutes of a match. "For God sake, it's only common sense."
