13

Humiliation for FAI, regardless of outcome

"Not that (Milo) Corcoran is necessarily to blame. He was put into a difficult situation and he effectively argues in his findings that the original handling of the case was so poor as to provide City with the basis for an argument."

Emmet Malone's above comment in his Irish Times column was, of course, in relation to the now-infamous Fran Carter saga.

Carter, as we all can recall, agreed to sign for Kilkenny City back in November 1999. Probably due to a laziness in accordance with his own laid-back character, allied with idiotic sloppiness Kilkenny City thought they wouldn't regret, General Manager Jim Rhatigan agreed with Carter to forge the Galway man's signature on his signing-on form for convenience purposes. It was hardly immoral, but it was very definitely illegal.

The chances are it's been done several times over. But the cats got caught.

Now, the rulebook becomes prevalent. Hats off to the FAI for sound judgement. Soon after the revelation of Rhatigan's naughtiness, Merrion Square enforced a three-point deduction on the Buckley Park club. Harsh?

In a word: no. The rulebook states that a player is properly registered when he has signed a registration form and the signature has been properly witnessed. The punishment for playing a player not properly registered is £1,000 and the loss of three points (whether the team wins or not) for each game in which the player features without being properly registered.

Rules, as they say, are just that: rules. Kilkenny unsurprisingly followed this decision by moans and groans of "no fair play" and again hinted that there was one way of treating the big clubs and another way of treating the smaller, provincial clubs.

Anyway, there was a feeling that the whole mess "hadn't gone away you know" with City threatening legal action. Eventually, and it took an awful long time, Kilkenny City accepted that an arbitrator would be chosen to effectively rule over the case. This happened on March 30th, quite a long time after the original revelation of the matter.

Now, the FAI had made their first serious error. An absolutely scandalous error. If you have read the quoted punishment above for exactly what Kilkenny City did, you should realise how wrong Merrion Square were.

Not initially, when they justifiably resorted to handing out the club a points deduction as the rulebook stipulated, but to unbelievably give in to Kilkenny and undergo the choosing of an "independent" arbitrator to resolve the mess.

It is extremely difficult to comprehend why the FAI took such a move. There has been talk of much "grey areas" surrounding the case. The only logical reasoning behind the FAI's U-turn would seem that Kilkenny were only doing something to save Carter - based miles away in Galway - the bother of doing it, and he after all had no problems with what was done.

That, however, is unprofessional, illegal, and incongruous in a League seeking respect. The FAI had punished Kilkenny. It didn't matter how "harsh" it was; the rulebook had spoken and you cannot argue with that.

Kilkenny had the choice so, of suggesting three possible arbitrators. What influence they themselves had on Merrion Square's dubious decision as to who should call the case - Milo Corcoran - is hard to know.

Corcoran's appointment provided another topic of contentious debate. Acclaimed as "a friend of the club" and who, if allegations were founded, is often an attendant at Kilkenny City games.

The whole case was now becoming very dodgy indeed. Few surprises when, within a few days, Milo decided that Kilkenny should replay the clash with Limerick, because there were "so many grey areas surrounding this case". He added, rather foolishly, that he hoped his decision would be "accepted as a football one, so as we can all move on from here."

So, the end of the rulebook. There are no defined "grey areas"; rules are defined. The ignorance of rules is indisputable.

With much justification, Longford Town and especially Dundalk protested this decision, the latter of whose threats to take the matter to the courts triggered the FAI's rather embarrassing postponing of the re-arranged game, a mere matter of days after they scheduled it in equally controversial circumstances.

And so, Dundalk did go to court, but unsuccessfully challenged Milo's call. As I write there are suggestions that the game will go ahead very soon, possibly before the last series of Division 1 games. There have been very complicated mutterings of further court action hinging on how the last series of games go. For example, did Kilkenny fail to win their last game in Monaghan, and Dundalk beat Home Farm Fingal, the whole issue would become a complete and utter money-wasting irrelevance.

But football is football and things can happen totally contrary to expectations. In any case, City are unlikely to fail to beat Monaghan.

If Kilkenny do beat Monaghan, the whole matter might be thrown into the open again. I do not have accurate information to work on as I write.

In all honesty, what's done is done. Regardless of what happens on the pitch, the FAI have - again - made a complete joke of the organisation.

They made the original decision in tune with the rulebook to deduct City three points. At that time in the season, there were loads of footballs to be contested for and City knew they had done wrong and should have got on with the job. Merrion Square should have stood firm.

What did they do? They gave in to the clowns in Buckley Park and ironically became clowns themselves thus. This talk about "grey areas" is laughable, as everyone knows that the signature was a dud, Carter was ineligible, and Carter played. Three points deduction, end of story.

Gentleman's agreements in legal terms are absolutely worthless. Kilkenny can complain all they want about Carter's consent. The fact of the matter is: they broke the rules.

A brilliant Division 1 series has been wrecked by a saga that was totally and utterly unavoidable.

In conclusion, the Republic of Ireland's governing body proved themselves to be incompetent, weak and unable again. How is this League to progress with a congregation of clowns over it? Already this season we have seen how - in the case of Bohemians signing Davey Williamson - the FAI's rules were seen to be "inadequate" and the association were forced to fork out several thousands of pounds due to having to go to court. One'd have considered that disaster enough ignominy for Merrion Square to suffer at least for one season, but sadly, there was more to follow.

This could have further reaching consequences. I'll leave it to one of the people who is Anti-eircom Park. "With the FAI over it, I wouldn't be surprised if the stadium collapsed in a few months."