Members of the executive committee of the new Athletic Association of Ireland met for the first time in Dublin yesterday to assess the momentous events of the previous day.

The new organisation, which will be marketed as Athletics Ireland, was born to the accompaniment varying degrees of acclaim and ambition, anger and anguish on Saturday. The merger of Bord Luthchleas na hEireann (BLE) and the National Athletics and Cultural Association (NACA) was in doubt until very late in the day.

BLE duly delivered their part of the merger pact at a special congress in the Burlington Hotel where 169 delegates voted unanimously to disband the organisation which had been formed by an amalgamation of the AAU and the old NACA in 1967.

The BLE meeting lasted no more than 75 minutes. A moving address by Paddy McGovern had established the mood of a gathering, coloured more it seemed by nostalgia than the fear of the unknown.

It was vastly different at the NACA congress where the 59 voting members managed to go on talking for the best part of seven hours. The press were not admitted - and at one point some members sought to have them removed from the hotel. This proved unsuccessful and waiting news people were there to witness some angry scenes at the end, as the disenchanted streamed out of the meeting vowing to keep the organisation in existence, irrespective of the democratic process.

They had just seen the move to reject the merger narrowly defeated - the dissidents claimed it was by just one vote - and were clearly far from satisfied. "It's a bad day for athletics, but I won't be losing any sleep tonight. There'll still be a NACA in being tomorrow," said Brian Kirk, a former president of the association.

"The new arrangement may work for a while, but at the end of the day it's doomed to failure. There is nothing in this agreement for the NACA. We already have good athletes and good international competition. We're far better to stay as we are," he added.

Most of the objections are understood to have been based on the fact that under the terms of the new agreement the Northern Ireland Federation will maintain its link with UK Athletics.

Kirk claimed that when the NACA chairman Michael Heery called for a show of hands on the proposal to merge it was actually defeated and that it was not until the voting process had been amended that the top table got the result it wanted.

This version of the climax of the meeting is disputed by Heery: "When the first show of hands took place, it was pointed out that some delegates who had been mandated to vote in a certain way actually went the opposite way," he said.

"Even then, however, there was a two-thirds majority for a yes vote. I accept that some of the people who voted against the amalgamation will continue to oppose it, but others who were against the move on Saturday have since let it be known that they will now row in behind us."

Some of the more sceptical noted the fact that while BLE voted to disband and reluctantly abandon their old title in the cause of progress the majority vote in the NACA was merely to suspend the organisation for two years.

There is in this the seeds of further aggravation, but Heery was emphatic in his denial that it represented a "get out clause" in the event of the new alliance coming undone.

"We've entered into this agreement in the spirit which was intended, with a 100 per cent commitment," he said. "Above all else we wish to create a climate which will benefit our athletes and give them the opportunities they need to develop their careers. The new association simply must succeed, to give them that chance - and we're determined to ensure that it will."

Nick Davis, the BLE president who, with Heery, will act as joint spokesman for the new body, said he was encouraged by the vision and magnanimity of spirit which had brought the AAI into existence.

"It augurs well for the development of the sport in our country," he said. Jim McDaid, the Minister for Sport, is on record as saying that after 2001, State funding will be available to only one athletics body in the country. It was this harsh ultimatum which eventually drove BLE and the NACA together at the end of negotiations first opened 12 years ago.

Members of the Northern Ireland Amateur Federation who had signed up to the proposed merger ahead of Saturday's meetings, welcomed the accord. "We believe that it is in everybody's interest that the administration of Irish athletics is rationalised," said a spokesman.

Al Guy, a member of the European Athletics Association, took the chair for part of yesterday's meeting during which a vote of sympathy was recorded on the death of the IAAF President, Dr Primo Nebiolo.