As Crumlin United await the outcome of a FIFA arbitration hearing that could net the club more than €100,000 from the sale of Robbie Keane by Leeds United to Tottenham Hotspur, the reluctance of senior clubs here to address the implications for them of the world body's new transfer regulations will likely return to haunt the domestic game.

Though Spurs, with the backing of the English FA, have denied liability, Crumlin look set to win FIFA support for their claim of a cut of the transfer fee, under the new regulations set aside for clubs that helped develop players as youngsters.

Aston Villa have already accepted the principle does apply to domestic transfers, and paid Home Farm a percentage of the fee they agreed with Charlton for Mark Kinsella. Others Irish players whose recent moves should generate windfalls for their former schoolboy outfits include Ben Burgess, Joe Murphy and Sean Thornton, although the figures in their cases would be dwarfed by the cheque winging its way to Ireland if FIFA uphold Crumlin's case and, to an even greater degree, if Damien Duff changes hands in the summer.

Crumlin, with around 600 players from children to senior level are a good example of the sort of deserving case on which FIFA idea was based. "If we get it," says club official Gerry McGuigan, "the money will bring the club on 10 years."

The new rules entitle schoolboy clubs to claim €10,000 for each year they have trained a player between the ages of 12 and 21 who turned professional after September 2001. In most cases here that would mean clubs being entitled to seek €40,000 for every youngster that leaves for England from the club that signs him.

Under the terms of a complicated system Eircom League clubs would benefit when one of their players moves on, to the tune €60,000 for each year he was with them, but clubs also face huge claims under the new regulations from junior outfits entitled to claim compensation from them also.

Calls by Eoin Hand, who has done a huge amount of work in this area and has been actively pursuing Crumlin's case, and the PFAI, to negotiate more manageable rates for moves within Ireland have repeatedly been ignored despite a number of discussions of the issue at league level.

At the moment, senior clubs here are ignoring the regulations and paying no compensation at all but in the absence of a local agreement it is open to any junior club to press for compensation under the international guidelines for every player recruited from an amateur club who turns professional.

"The figures involved would be ridiculous," says Fran Gavin of the PFAI, "but as usual, the league are failing to take adopt a strategy for dealing with this and just waiting instead until they react to something that happens somewhere down the line."

The problem, Gavin argues, arises in part from the fact when FIFA's proposals were being discussed originally, everybody here saw higher levels of compensation as a good thing. "They only ever looked at themselves as selling clubs," says Gavin, "never from the point of view that they would be buyers too."

Hand, who made a presentation on the implications of the regulations to the league clubs, admits there's a danger the same clubs will be seen as trying to have their cake and eat it, particularly by English clubs who may well defend themselves at international tribunals by pointing to the refusal of senior clubs here to pay out under the scheme.

"But there's scope there for an agreement," says Hand, "something that's fair to everybody and I think if clubs here even said they were prepared to pay €1,000 for each year a player has been brought through as a junior then there might be the basis for moving forward."

So far, there is little indication of even that level of progress being made with the result that junior clubs here find themselves in the position where it is potentially worth thousands for them to ship a player off to England, as compared to nothing when a teenager moves instead to an Irish club.

It seems only a matter of time before the junior outfits, who traditionally have little love for their senior counterparts, act, if only to protect their position in relation to their claims against the big English clubs. Only then, it seems, will the Eircom League sides start to treat a situation with something approaching a sense of urgency.