QuoteI meant even to be in attendance, as opposed to actually partaking.
Would seem very FAI-ish for us to find out how much money we're going to get (if any!) on the radio news on the way home from the match!
I don't think so. The tribunal will decide what level of compensation is due. A representative from UCD or Shels is going to have a biassed opinion.
I meant even to be in attendance, as opposed to actually partaking.
Would seem very FAI-ish for us to find out how much money we're going to get (if any!) on the radio news on the way home from the match!
The piece posted there from the Indo said Friday morning not Friday night.
There's piece about it in the Times today by Emmet Malone, he seems convinced Ollie will bring it to court.
We're not arrogant, we're just better.
Yeah, saw that since - I'm an idiot...
There is a report on Alan in the Observer today. Not much new in it buy a few interesting little snippets though.
Apparently UCD sent a solicitor's letter to the league to ensure that a tribunal was set up. This had to be done by 5pm on Friday and according to yesterdays Indo it has been.
The relevant league rule (19.23) is quoted to say payment is due for a player under 23 'who has been in employment with his present club for at least 2 consecutive seasons.'.
Alan signed on 1st August 2002 a month into the season but had his contract back datad to the start of the season and was paid for the full season.
The paper also repeats the figure of 40,000 euro which it says is arrived at under a formula agreed under league rules.
It says thet 40,000 represents about one sixth of the clubs annual budget.
Another own goal for soccer
WITH spectacular inevitability, the domestic season has again kicked off with off-field controversy.
The unseemly squabble between Shelbourne and UCD over whether Alan Cawley's departure from Belfield should be subject to a transfer fee is the latest in an interminably long list of intractable disputes which continue to blight the game.
So, instead of the season kicking off in expectation of better crowds and better football, we have a conflict more redolent of the school-
yard, which has done nothing but scar a product already mutilated by opprobrium.
That a player, Alan Cawley, has been denied the opportunity to ply his trade by this dispute, could be forgotten amidst the insults which have been flying around his head for the past ten days.
Yet, he has and, with the ever present possibility of this one ending up in a law court, he may be kicking his heels for a while yet. He may also wonder should he walk away completely, like others before him, deciding in his mid-20s that the so-called professional game here cares more about self-interest than players like him.
The mechanics of the dispute have once again highlighted the inability of the Eircom League's constituent parts to work with each other, despite the fact that they, and the League itself, remain in a comatose state.
The actual rights and wrongs of the Cawley affair have little wider significance, other than the residual bad blood which will ineradicably exist between the nominal winners and losers.
Yet, what laughably escapes the protagonists in each tawdry dispute is that the erosion of the very fabric which should weave the local game together continues to unravel with frightening inexorability.
Where there should be co-operation to achieve strength in numbers, there is instead an alarming anarchic streak, which basically determines that each club should look after its own interest and ignore the big picture.
The promotion of the Eircom League in a land blighted by weighty obstacles such as the pre-eminence of other sports and a radical increase in juvenile apathy and inertia is a task in itself.
Remarkably, given this landscape, the Eircom League attempts to promulgate a product where the 22 major factions are presented (correctly) as generally incompetent, always quarrelling, financially reckless and deeply suspicious of every attempt made by its neighbour to improve oneself.
The nominal body chosen to oversee this entropy, the League authority, is consistently undermined, ridiculed and denuded of all responsibility when it is called upon to apply judgments.
The FAI occasionally interrupts this chaotic flow, solely on the whim of whichever of the 22 clubs needs a favour that week, and sees fit to override, ignore or reinterpret decisions made by the League.
This is because the League is technically a separate entity from the FAI but, of course, only when it suits the parent body. Where disputes have become politically sensitive, the hierarchy's sense of smell becomes disproportionately more acute and, Hey Presto, the League reverts to tame sub-ordinance.
The Cawley affair may have its origin amidst the fine print of an intractable rule book but in essence it is a classic symbol of the manner in which football is run in this country.
UCD and Shelbourne may never admit this in public, but there is more to this dispute than meets the eye. The resignation of Brendan Dillon as League chairman is directly relevant - as is the FAI's role in his departure.
Regardless of the outcome of Friday's tribunal - and the chances of an intervention by Fran Rooney can't be ruled out at this late stage - each club will cry foul and retreat into the long grass to be better prepared for their next exercise in sophistry.
And, still, our clubs will retreat into a financial haze, seduced by ordinary players seeking extraordinary wages, while the majority of their customers are unable to urinate in comfort.
And they wonder why the crowds aren't improving, why there is no progress in the European stage, why clubs are losing money in a witless fashion from year to year, why sugar daddies would walk a mile before ploughing a cent into an Irish club.
The FAI can offer all the lip service to the League they want and, seduced by the cosmetic advances generated by the Genesis report, gaily flirt with the idea of ending all problems with a full merger. But can you see 22 clubs absolving themselves of their responsibility while just eight or so of their number, under direct rule by the FAI, run the League?
In the absence of common sense, brace yourselves for the next senseless diversion from matters on the field. Sadly, fewer and fewer people care anymore.
Cawley is just the latest to join a lengthening list. And it will be ever thus as long as the clubs continue at the helm of such a lurching vessel.
David Kelly
The Bootroom
I'm a total neophyte to Irish football politics. Why would Dillon's resignation be as linked in with this case as Kelly suggests? Is it because he was "our guy" (and not Shels')
It strikes me as a kind of idioty article written to fill column space. Dillon's row is with the FAI (and Fran Rooney in particular), not with Shels. Don't think it's the best article ever written on the subject!
Any news on the case yet? Has a date even been set for certain?
Wasn't it supposed to be on last Friday?Originally Posted by pineapple stu
You can't spell failure without FAI
It got postposned for some reason or other. New date was either today (haven't heard anything) or tomorrow.
According to the Shels message board here (I don't know if that link will bring you directly to the post - go to "Chat" and the post headed "Cawley" if it doesn't), the hearing collapsed today as Ollie walked away insisting they owed us nothing.
Cawley in limbo as Shels reject €20,000 price tag
ALAN CAWLEY is further away than ever from playing football again, it seems, after a €20,000 price tag was yesterday placed on his head by an Eircom League compensation tribunal.
UCD will be entitled to receive that amount from any club wishing to acquire his services. However, that club won't be Shelbourne, who revealed last night that they had dispensed with the player's services.
It is difficult to see Cawley finding another League club willing to pay such a hefty fee.
Cawley spent two seasons with UCD before signing for Shelbourne, a move which instigated the compensation saga which has blighted the opening of this season's league campaign.
"We're happy that the process has been fulfilled in accordance with the rules," said UCD secretary Dick Shakespeare.
What sort of gobsh!te is Ollie Byrne?!?! Can't bully his way to getting the player, so he goes off in a huff instead! I presume the 20k fee was decided by the tribunal in the end? If so, that means that we're completely in the right. That flag will get a few more outings yet so!
And does that mean that he's technically still one of our players then as we still hold his registration?
I would think that he is technically unattached but anyone who wants him before he's 23 will have to pay us the 20k. I wonder would he come back and play for us for the rest of the season?
We're not arrogant, we're just better.
Hope he signed a hefty contract with Shels and sues the arse of them himself...
54,321 sold - wws will never die - ***
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He'd have to sign as an amateur for us (like Seán Finn - presumably 'cos our wages budget is up). Don't know how happy he'd be with that. He should sue either Shels or his agent for loss of income surely?
My thought exactly!
Wonder how it is suing Shels comes so naturally to the mind?!
$hels
$hels have acted disgracefully in this and I hope Cawley does sue them for whatever wages they would have paid him; surely this would count as an unfair dismissal? They knew, or at the very least were aware of the possibility, that they'd have to pay us money for him and for them to sack (effectively) when told that they have to pay up is appalling.
We're not arrogant, we're just better.
Speaking to the Irish Sun, Shelbourne chief executive Ollie Byrne said: “It has nothing to do with us. Alan Cawley and UCD have issues between themselves which have to be dealt with and they have no bearing on Shelbourne FC. Alan Cawley has no relationship or contract with Shelbourne FC.”
There's a big contrast between that statment concerning Alan's pre-contract agreement and his actual contract with Shels and Shels' attitude to Ciaran Martyn's pre-contract agreement over the summer.
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