Wanderers stay in 16-team second division

As Irish solutions to Irish problems go, the IRFU's latest offering takes the biscuit. In what constitutes an embarrassing climbdown prior to their projected High Court rendezvous with Wanderers next Tuesday, the union and the club have agreed a compromise whereby not only Wanderers, but also Malone and Ballynahinch, will all play in a second division of 16 clubs in the All-Ireland League next season.

The final Division Two table for the 1997-98 season will thus show that Wanderers occupied the third and last automatic relegation spot after their postponed match on the final round at home to Buccaneers was the only senior game in the country to be called off on April 11th. Yet the record books will also show that Wanderers were not relegated.

After much prevarication, the IRFU had decreed that Wanderers should forfeit the match and the points, thus relegating them to Division Three, with Malone left to fill the play-off place against the Division Three runners-up, Ballynahinch. But Wanderers sought and were granted a High Court injunction last week preventing the union from carrying out that decision prior to next Tuesday's High Court action.

In what constitutes a damning indictment of both their flawed regulations and procedures, the union were obviously led to believe by their legal advisers that they would face difficulties in any court case with Wanderers. This despite the voluntary evidence given by Owen Doyle, the union's national referee development officer, at the IRFU hearing. He had walked the Merrion Road pitch in his shoes on April 11th and deemed it to be playable.

Another union official came to the same conclusion after walking the pitch. Thus, in the heel of the hunt, the feeling around the country will be that Wanderers pulled a fast one and rode roughshod over the league, both morally and legally, but because the union's regulations and laboured procedures left them with more holes than a soup-strainer, Wanderers got away with it.

Thus, to avert further legal wrangles with either Malone or Ballynahinch, they too will be accommodated in Division Two next season. Today's second leg of the Malone-Ballynahinch promotion relegation play-off (Malone having won the first leg 15-10) has been called off.

This compromise has significant consequences for the AIB League format next season. Instead of the union's projected four division format of 12, 14, 12 and 10 clubs, instead it will be 12, 16, 10 and 10. Hence, there will be 15 rounds of fixtures in Division Two, four more than in the first division, and six more than in the third and fourth divisions, creating all sorts of potential fixture congestion, as well as the format for reducing Division Two at the season's end.