THE Jason Sherlock-Paddy Delaney controversy came to an unexpected conclusion last night when the Dublin county committee voted unanimously to suspend vice-chairman Delaney for spitting at Sherlock during the Dublin-Offaly under-21 match.

The suspension is for two months, in accordance with the recommendation of the county management committee.

In a further development, it was confirmed that the two officers, John Egan and Gerry Devlin, who had resigned in the wake of last Monday's meeting would reconsider their decisions.

While the outcome was no surprise, the timing was. Last night's meeting had been originally scheduled to place on notice a motion to rescind last Monday week's decision by the county committee to overturn management's recommendation. Instead the second meeting required by procedure was convened a couple of minutes after the first adjourned.

After the public relations disaster of last week, the meeting was tightly organised, well choreographed and proceedings piloted through in the absence of dissent or controversy by chairman for the night, Gerry Brady.

County chairman John Bailey was absent from last night's meeting because he is still recuperating at home from a back operation undergone last week. In Bailey's absence, Brady was elected to the chair, a function he performed last week before walking out with the rest of the management committee when its proposals were struck down by the county committee.

The minutes of that meeting were passed unanimously after a query from the floor which suggested that last week's meeting had acted ultra vires by refusing to accept the decision of the committee they had appointed to deal with the issue and whose findings should have been binding.

Brady accepted that the query was "an intelligent thought" but said that he couldn't see such an interpretation "solving the matter".

The chair then outlined his proposal for resolving the difficulty. A two thirds majority would be needed to overturn the decision of the county committee. Brady indicated that Round Towers, Delaney's club, had indicated they had a statement to make.

In the light of this statement, Brady felt that the original plans of the executive - to put the motion on notice last night and table it for discussion next Monday - could be altered provided the meeting was absolutely unanimous on the proposal.

The two requirements for this course of action were that delegates would consider themselves properly notified of the second meeting and that they wouldn't need to refer back to their clubs for a mandate.

Bernie Cronin of Round Towers made a conciliatory speech recognising the damage done and said "we regret our part in it. It was never our intention that members of management would resign and review their positions. Nor was it our intention to cause any disharmony. And we never foresaw such damaging media coverage.

He also said he was conscious that their relationships with certain boards within the organisation had suffered and expressed the hope that they "could move forward in unity to face the many challenges facing Dublin GAA"

He concluded by asking that the meeting accept the proposal unanimously.

Gerry O'Connor, a selector on the under-21 side and one of the witnesses to the spitting incident, entered the evening's only note of dissent by saying a few words about Jason Sherlock.

The player had, O'Connor felt, been misrepresented at the previous week's meeting - a reference to the suggestion from the floor that Sherlock should have been suspended for six months for refusing to play for his county. Sherlock had been invited to join the under-21s, had accepted and had played whenever available to do so. In fairness to the player, O'Connor thought that a vote should be taken.

Brady reiterated his desire to have everything settled unanimously and O'Connor acceded. The first meeting was then adjourned for a few minutes before the second meeting was called to order.

County secretary John Costello then read the two notices of motion, proposing the rescinding of the minutes of the previous week's meeting and the acceptance of the recommendations of the management committee.

The motion was accepted unanimously.