If you want a good laugh have a look at the bluster here:
http://www.orielweb.com/dundalktalk/...0533&start=735
A contract dispute doesn’t get into the High Court unless the claim is for over €75,000. Add the exhorbitant legal costs that go with a High Court case and you’re looking at a potential exposure of upwards of €200,000 for O’Donnell and/or Dundalk if the Court upholds the claim.
The facts in the public domain (and not denied by O’Donnell even though some Dundalk fans seem to believe that he was out of contract) are that he had two years to run on a contract that had been validly extended and was advised by someone that he only had to give a week’s notice to get out of it. If that was really true, why do you think compensation is paid all the time to businesses in Ireland and elsewhere when people under contract are headhunted by other companies. Unless the Court decides to set a new legal precedent (which will mean there’d be no point in having fixed-term contracts any more in Ireland as they couldn’t be enforced) St Pats are going to win this and the personal implications for O’Donnell will be very severe. So I hope the people now advising him are a bit more knowledgeable than the bluster brigade on Orielweb.