Play-off dispute to be decided in High Court on Friday

The dispute between the National League, Dundalk and Kilkenny City over who will face Waterford United in the forthcoming promotion/relegation play-off looks set to be finally decided in the High Court on Friday.

At a brief hearing in the court yesterday Mr Justice Finnegan, who formally entered City the proceedings which had up until then been essentially between Dundalk and the league said that he would hear the case in full then, unless an agreement had been reached between the various parties in the meantime.

Afterwards there were some talks aimed at avoiding a return to court with legal representatives for Kilkenny reportedly offering Dundalk a one-off game between the two clubs at Buckley Park to decide the issue. Club officials from Dundalk, however, favoured either a two-legged tie or one played at a neutral venue.

With the league apparently preferring to see the matter resolved once and for all on Friday, however, the talks came to nothing and the upshot is that the playoffs, already put back once, have now been provisionally pencilled in for Saturday and Monday evenings.

"It would appear that the league want someone else to make the decision at this stage," said Dundalk chairman Des Denning afterwards.

"Still, we're hoping that it can be resolved and we'll be on standby to play a game on Thursday evening, ideally," he concluded with a laugh "against Waterford United."

Kilkenny City club secretary Jim Rhattigan insisted, meanwhile, that he was strongly against the idea of any deal being done and said that there would be further problems arising out of any postponement of the play-off first leg which had been fixed on Sunday for tomorrow evening at Buckley Park.

"We won't be playing Dundalk, there's no question of it, we've never been scheduled to," he said before adding that "as far we're concerned we're playing on Thursday, they didn't put off the Limerick game last week because of the case and we don't see why they should attempt to put this one off either."

Later, though, a spokesperson the league made it clear that the organisation's management now see Saturday as the most likely day for Waterford to be involved in a play-off. "The dates could change because when the matter is decided on Friday the two clubs will have a say in things," he said. "And the fact that Monday's game will probably mean an extra week's wages having to be paid anyway might mean that the clubs want to take a bit more time over the games.