Longford get their nine points back

Longford Town moved swiftly back up the Eircom League premier division table yesterday after the club's appeal against the nine-point penalty imposed for playing Avery John without proper international clearance was upheld. The decision lifted the club from ninth to fourth in the table prior to last night's league game at UCD.

The three-man appeals committee, made up of Bill Attlee, Denis Cruise and Noel Kennelly, found for the midlands club on a number of grounds, deciding that:

Longford had acted in the honest belief that Bohemians rather than Colchester United had been John's previous club;

The league had informed Longford the defender was eligible to play in the relevant matches;

The Board of Control - which had imposed the original penalty - had contained a number of people whose own clubs were directly affected by the case.

It was also argued that the FAI's general secretary, Brendan Menton, had since conceded there were weaknesses in the registration procedure that had been highlighted by this case and that new structures had been put in place since Longford were punished.

The committee recommended the handling of registrations should in future be centralised and that, after this has happened, letters from whichever body ends up with responsibility for the registrations informing clubs of which players are eligible to play for them should effectively serve as authorisation to field the individuals named.

"I think that, overall, the verdict has been fairly comprehensive," said Longford chairman Jim Hanley last night. "They have backed us on a number of points and in the circumstances I would expect that to put an end to the matter."

The possibility does remain that the league, or even one of its clubs could attempt to bring the matter on to arbitration now but Hanley said he felt the league was "duty bound to accept the decision of a higher authority", while he was taking the fact he had been informed on Thursday that no other club was a party to the matter as a firm indication that none would be able to get involved at this stage.

Hanley complimented the association on the way the appeal had been handled and the members of the appeals committee on the way they had dealt with the evidence put before them. He also expressed the hope that "a few things might be sorted out on the basis of what has happened here".

Manager Alan Matthews, meanwhile, said he was delighted with the outcome. "We don't want to attribute blame anywhere, we accept that the members of the Board of Control were only doing what they saw as being their job. But people should recognise that Longford is a club that does its homework, on the pitch and off it," he said.

"The administrators acted entirely properly through all of this and I'm very happy that that's been recognised, and the players also deserve some recognition for the way that they've handled themselves while all of this has been hanging over them."