So it ended almost as it had begun. Two years after Eircom Park was unveiled in a blaze of publicity at one Dublin hotel, it died with the media again looking on in another.

Inevitably in such a grand battle there were winners and losers at the Green Isle Hotel last night with the likes of Brendan Menton, John Byrne and John Delaney finally celebrating a vindication of a position they had long maintained.

But for FAI chief executive Bernard O'Byrne there were signs that the days ahead will be tough, with longstanding critics making it clear that there remain a number of key issues to be faced up to. More than one insisted that the one remaining item on their agenda is O'Byrne's departure from office.

One of the key aspects to yesterday's hectic day of events was the fact that the four-man subcommittee appointed to investigate O'Byrne's usage of his credit card last year have now been asked to look into a number of other matters.

The game's leading administrator now faces serious questioning on:

1) Further spending on his company credit card amounting to roughly £6,000 above the figure already reported in the media.

2) The fact that he signed a memorandum of agreement with International Management Group (IMG) that tied up a large proportion of the association's marketing rights with the company without the FAI's treasurer seeing the deal for another 12 months.

3) How a letter from construction company Ascon, the Irish wing of Dutch engineering firm HBG who were to build Eircom Park, stating that the company could not guarantee that £65 million price tag for the stadium was received in August 1999 was apparently only uncovered by Menton the following June.

In excess of £1.5 million was spent on the project after this letter was originally received.

At yesterday's meeting O'Byrne insisted that he would not leave his post without being pushed by the association and it appears that, despite some support amongst less involved delegates, the two sides are involved in little more than a battle over the terms of his departure.

"I always said that if Eircom Park went ahead then I would go and I felt others would have done the same," said Delaney last night.

"In the circumstances I would have hoped that the same would apply on the other side. As it is I find it amazing that he (O'Byrne) might end up having an important role in how the funds we have helped to secure for the association will now be spent."

At yesterday's meeting O'Byrne insisted that the scale of those funds came as a surprise but last night Menton claimed that not only had the same deal been obtainable 12 months ago but that funds would also have been provided to designate one National League ground for development into an all-seater stadium with a capacity of 20,000.

For the scheme's three main opponents, though, yesterday's outcome remains an immense victory on both a personal and political level.

Still, there is a belief in other quarters, strongly held amongst some of yesterday's delegates, that without Eircom Park having pushed so far down the road nothing close to the deal obtained from the Government for rowing in behind Stadium Ireland could have been achieved. For that, it is said, O'Byrne must receive some of the credit.

Indeed, a senior IRFU source is reported to have commented after seeing the details of the Stadium Ireland deal that "we should have pretended to have been building a new stadium for the last two years".

The governing bodies of both rugby and Gaelic games will now use the funding promised to the FAI as leverage to obtain more public money for their own sports.

The Government may yet end up paying out money to those sports, for, crucially, they showed themselves willing on this occasion to win a battle on the basis of little more than having deeper pockets.

Deep as the Government were prepared to dig in order to see off Eircom Park and guarantee that at least the running costs of their own Stadium Ireland would have a reasonable chance of being met, deals that would have committed the FAI to building Eircom Park came within a whisker of being signed with Davy Hickey Properties a month ago.

Having narrowly avoided a conclusive defeat on that occasion the sceptics knew this week they were finally about to prevail. After almost two years of offering almost unquestioning praise, even the representatives of the FAI's junior leagues, so long the backbone of Bernard O'Byrne's support, came to bury Eircom Park yesterday.

As soon as their intentions became clear on Thursday night, so too did the fact that the game was up for the long-troubled project.

That they finally joined forces with the representatives of the senior clubs, some of whom they had clashed with bitterly at last year's annual general meeting, at least held out the hope that the two sections can now build bridges and forge policies based on mutual interest in momentous times.

It is certainly vital that the various levels of the organisation work together now to maximise the potential of the funds that have been offered to them. Invested wisely so as to achieve the full potential of the Government's matching funds the total inflow of capital to the game should exceed the £75 million that should flow into the association through a mixture of grants and advance sales of seats and boxes at Stadium Ireland.

Just knowing that the possibility of substantial backing from the national association exists will provide an incentive to clubs and leagues from around the country to initiate projects and start the process of raising their share of the funding required.

Even then, however, it should be remembered that football is played by more than 150,000 people at it various levels in this country, and some 4,500 clubs will have been looking on with rapidly growing expectations as the broad outline of this deal became public.

Football, root and branch, is not going to be transformed by this injection of cash - its ills are far too great for that, its underfunding too long a feature.

After countless years of being poorly treated by governments, however, and more than a decade of lacking the resources required to cope with the implications of its own success, soccer in the Republic finally has a chance to make up some lost ground.

Having embraced that opportunity, the game's leadership yesterday must know well they can ill-afford to squander it.