(Migrated this question from Stack Overflow)

I am working on a client's website which is based on the Joomla 2.5 framework. With SEF turned off (the in built Joomla version) the URL is this

    http://(domain)/index.php?option=com_cmgroupbuying&view=alldeals&Itemid=424

The user has a plugin, I have built into a plugin the line to make sure this plugin only fires when the component CMGroupbuying is in use

    $component = JRequest::getCmd('option'); 
    if($component =='com_cmgroupbuying')
                   { etc etc }

With SEF turned off, this works beautifully. However when I enable SEF the URL turns into

    http://(domain)/the-deals

and the detection script stops working as joomla just no longer sees the Request::getCmd('option'); being equal to com_cmgroupbuying which to be honest, blows me away as it renders getCmd totally useless. I have seen other prople suffer with this in the part but not found any definitive fix

Can anyone offer a solution to stop this failure of Joomla, either by some extra lines in the DEFAULT htaccess fault to retain this information for joomla to use.

An alternative solution, though I have not found anything that does this, is to limit the plugin to only certain menu items like you can do with a module.

EDIT

This is the full code of the plugin. I have not included the helper as this is just a mass list of all agents for lookups.

    <?php /**  * @package     CMMobileDetection plugin  * @copyright   Copyright (C) 2012-2013 CMExtension Team http://www.cmext.vn/  * @license     http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html GNU/GPL  */
    
    // No direct access defined('_JEXEC') or die;
    
    jimport('joomla.plugin.plugin');
    
    require_once 'helper.php';
    
    class plgSystemCMMobileDetection extends JPlugin {
        public function onAfterInitialise()
        {
            if(JPATH_BASE != JPATH_ADMINISTRATOR)
            {
                $browser        = new Mobile_Detect();
                $mobileCookie   = JFactory::getApplication()->input->cookie->get('cmmobileRequestDesktop',
    -1, 'int');
                $component      = JRequest::getVar('option');
    
                if(($browser->isMobile() || $browser->isTablet()) && ($mobileCookie == 0 || $mobileCookie == -1) && $component == 'com_cmgroupbuying')
                {
                    $configuration  = $this->getConfiguration();
                    $db             = JFactory::getDBO();
                    $query          = "SELECT params FROM #__template_styles WHERE client_id = 0 AND template = ".$db->Quote($configuration['mobile_template'])." ORDER BY id LIMIT 1";
                    $db->setQuery($query);
                    $params         = $db->loadResult();
    
                    if(empty($params))
                        $params = '{}';
    
                    JFactory::getApplication()->setTemplate($configuration['mobile_template'], $params);
                }
            }
        }
    
        public function getConfiguration()
        {
            $db             = JFactory::getDBO();
            $query          = 'SELECT * FROM #__cmgroupbuying_configuration WHERE id = 1';
            $db->setQuery($query);
            $configuration  = $db->loadAssoc();
    
            if($db->getErrorNum())
            {
                //JError::raiseError(500, implode('<br />', $errors));
                return false;
            }
    
            return $configuration;
        } } ?>

This does include my alteration, which basically has one function, stop the plugin loading on ANY page that is NOT using option=com_cmgroupbuying as it interferes with the mobile template of all the other pages. As already stated, this works beautifully when SEF is turned off.