FAI to face Premiership head on

In one of those occasional displays of bravado by the FAI, the ones which all too often end in tears, next week's replay of the FAI Cup final has been scheduled for Sunday afternoon when it will go head-to-head for viewers with the final afternoon of action from the English Premiership.

Yesterday's contest, between Bray Wanderers and Finn Harps which failed to produce a goal at Tolka Park, was a disappointment with neither side creating much in a tightly-contested game that threw up only a handful of chances throughout.

The attendance was also a major let-down with only around 8,000, two-thirds of them from Donegal, gracing an occasion which when Bray last competed, in 1990, drew four times as many spectators at Lansdowne Road.

It's difficult to see how next Sunday's game will match even yesterday's figure with the potentially decisive Premiership games involving Manchester United and Arsenal due to be carried live on Sky, while RTE television will, in addition to the replay, also be covering both the National League hurling final and the Monaco Grand Prix.

"We had a meeting to discuss what we should do after yesterday's game," admitted FAI general secretary Bernard O'Byrne last night, "but the feeling was that we should get on with our own fixtures and not worry too much about what is going on elsewhere."

Both clubs, he added, seemed happy about the situation, although neither side's representatives seemed entirely aware of the scheduling problem when approached by members of the press at Tolka Park yesterday.

The decision to plough ahead with another 4.15 kick off on Sunday afternoon seems particularly odd given that the FAI has distributed more than £500,000 to clubs here towards the cost of floodlights which it obtained from Sky television on precisely the basis that matches here couldn't compete fairly with those being beamed in from across the water.

If Harps were to encounter anything close to the difficulty in selling their allocation of tickets for the replay as Bray faced the first time around then the FAI is likely to have to choose between a late switch and next weekend's game attracting the lowest ever attendance at a final - a record currently held by the 1984 replay between UCD and Shamrock Rovers which was watched by an estimated 6,500 spectators.

This isn't entirely new territory for the FAI. Last season's final replay had to be played on a Saturday evening in order to avoid a clash with either the English FA Cup final on the Saturday afternoon or Paul McGrath's testimonial at Lansdowne Road on the Sunday. There have been other late switches, but this time, it seems, the association is going for broke, which may just be exactly what they achieve.