This is going from bad to worse

**Éanna** · 16/04/2002, 2:47 PM

From eircomleague.net

Dolan says Ireland accepts Saints as League champs
Saturday, April 13th, 2002

Saint Patrick's Athletic boss Pat Dolan has promised to leave Irish football forever if it is proved that all Shelbourne's players were fully registered this season.
As the Inchicore club analyses what it does now after the FAI appeal board rejected its appeal of the 15-points deduction arising from the Charles Mbabazi Livingstone affair, Dolan's words have not frightened his adversaries across the Liffey.

The Pat's boss has claimed that the country has accepted his side as League champions and he has criticised FAI chief executive Brendan Menton, League chairman Michael Hyland and Shelbourne secretary Ollie Byrne.

"I will resign and never work in Irish soccer again if [Shelbourne] prove that all their players are fully registered according to [rules 16A and 33]," Dolan vowed to Garry Doyle of The Star.

"My question to Ollie Byrne is: will he make the same offer if their players are not properly registered?"

However Byrne, who told this website earlier in the week that Shelbourne deserved to be champions, returned the serve with power and called on Dolan to quit Pat's.

"He should go," Byrne maintained. "He's been caught out this time. And I won't have to resign because I have an acknowledgement from the League that all my players were properly registered.

"If it is proven that Shelbourne Football Club played an unregistered player this season then I will put the club up for sale immediately - and if the new owners wanted me to resign then I would.

"But we didn't make any mistakes and we have a receipt from the League to prove this. I can tell you that not one of my players has played for Shelbourne without the League having in its possession a registered form prior to any game."

Dolan seems convinced that some of his many enemies are behaving in a secretive manner and he responded: "Why will Ollie not answer the question directly?"

"Are all his players registered directly fully according to the registration rules under which we have been deducted the points? Simply answer - yes, or no?

"The FAI's appeal decision will almost inevitably drive us into the courts," he said, "to seek the champisonship that we have earned.

"The bottom like is that we won the title on the pitch. The country has said that we are the champions. Will Brendan Menton, the FAI's general secretary, agree?"

To date, Pat's have not gone to the courts. Many believe they would not have a leg to stand on and it is interesting that while Shelbourne were backed up by their legal team at the appeal hearing, St Pat's had no legal team whatever.

Dolan still believes that his club was hard done by. "I find it amazing that Noel Hunt played a number of games for Waterford United when there were questions over his registration and yet they only lost three points. In our case we lost 15 points. That is our experience of justice and fair play," he said.

"What will always remain in my memory from this year is the image of a club that was beaten on the pitch by five points trying, pathetically, to claim that they were champions. Has the bitterness in Irish football sunk this low?

"We did not attempt to play an illegal player. We had a two-year contract with Mbabazi Livingstone and we have acknowledged that there was a clerical error in regard to the date on the form.

"Is this really enough to stop us being champions? He has always been our player and we never sought or gained any advantage."

The Galway man's column in the tabloid paper today was full of pathy and anger about the Saints' unfortunate predicament, but he made no reference to how lucky they were not to get deducted any points originally over the Paul Marney affair.

Marney was not registered at all for the first three games of the season. The club lied that it had sent his registration form in unregistered post, when it had simply not been sent.

Ollie Byrne brought that issue up again during the week and said that the issue had not been resolved in the FAI. Dolan, meanwhile, claims that "the country has decided we are champions", but many neutrals would strongly object to that.

Sadly for Pat's, it seems they have been punished for their own behaviour during the original Marney case. Otherwise, it is highly unlikely that a 15-point deduction would have been enforced.