O'Byrne comes out fighting hard

His most prominent critics in the National League remained unmoved by his words at Saturday's a.g.m in the Citywest Hotel in Dublin and his attempt to shift the final decision over the fate of Eircom Park from the association's board of management to a body with a broader representation from his own power base in junior football looks certain to be scuppered by company law.

Still, Bernard O'Byrne's long and emotive speech to delegates over the weekend represented an impressive performance by a man now fighting hard to save a project to which he has devoted so much of the past two years.

Accusing those who have doggedly claimed that the figures don't add up of basically not wanting the stadium to be built and insisting once again that the finance is available to proceed if and when the issue of planning permission is sorted out, the association's chief executive appealed to delegates not to squander such an "historic" opportunity.

O'Byrne repeated his claim that the economics of Eircom Park represented a much better deal than anything which the Government might offer and stated that he had been dismayed on Wednesday night when a vote to open talks with the Government had been defeated by nine votes to eight. "The reason I was upset, though, was because I knew that if that vote had been passed that nobody would have taken us seriously anymore and that I would have been coming here telling you that the project was dead. I was shocked by the thought that nine people could have outvoted the perhaps 200,000 who want this thing to happen."

He finished with an emotional appeal to the delegates from out side of the National League to voice their support. Citing Martin Luther King, whose speeches he had been reading on his recent holiday in the United States, he said that "it is not the words of you enemies that you remember, it's the silence of your friends."

The effect was immediate with a steady stream of delegates from a string of local and regional leagues around the country voicing their strong support for O'Byrne and the stadium. During what was at times a heated debate the National League clubs were criticised on several occasions for the stand which they have taken in recent weeks and the strength of their voting block on the association's main bodies, particularly the board of management, was identified as a major bone of contention.

A suggestion made by O'Byrne in his speech that a special meeting of all the affiliates, equivalent in size to Saturday's meeting, be called where the current business plan could be presented was formally proposed from the floor and passed.

With regard to this business plan the association's treasurer, Brendan Menton, said that he believed the figures involved: £65 million construction costs, £89 million total costs and £55 million in commercial income raised by IMG leaving a debt burden of some £31.4 million) was "about the limit" of what he felt the association could stretch to.

"If IMG can raise that much then great, if Deutsche Bank can guarantee that the money is there to go ahead, superb, but let's have it from them in writing," he said.

And while O'Byrne maintains that the business community is more than willing to provide the shortfall currently envisaged, it is on this collection of this figures, as well of course, as on the fate of the stadium with the planners, that Eircom Park's future rests.

Representatives of the National League clubs, who were with one or two exceptions fairly subdued on Saturday, say they will meet as planned on July 27th to hear Brendan Menton's view on the scheme as a whole. By then, both sides insist, they will have gained access to all of the documentation and figures involved in the whole project and if he is won over on the question of its viability then things will start to look up.

If not then the problems will continue for, as the association's honorary secretary pointed out to the afternoon's first meeting of the new council, the board of management remains under company law, the association's most important decision making body. The proposed meeting of the affiliates, scheduled for August 10th will be for information purposes, he said, and will have no real standing in law.

Whether Menton can be brought around, then, remains a key question. Previously he has expressed strong doubts about the £65 and £89 million figure as well IMG's ability to generate £80 million in advance sales - of which £55 million would be passed on to the association. And then there is the question of day to day running costs with, for instance, the business plan projection of seven senior games attended by 43,000 each per annum appearing optimistic to some.

Already the need to borrow to get through the remainder of the planning process would suggest that the £31.4 million debt figure will have to be breached by a million or two while O'Byrne himself concedes that the conditions attached to a successful planning permission could prove costly.

Earlier in the day the association's president, Pat Quigley, had informed delegates that he had invited representatives of the associations in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to preliminary talks about the FAI's proposal to bid for the European Championships in 2008.