National League champions Shelbourne will this afternoon attempt to muster support from other senior clubs for a renewed assault on the Eircom Park project ahead of tomorrow's FAI a.g.m. at the Citywest Hotel in Dublin.
The club called an emergency meeting of the league's Management Committee early yesterday morning and by lunchtime around half of the 22 clubs eligible to attend had indicated their support for the proposal. While Shelbourne officials were not saying too much about their intentions yesterday it is believed that they will be hoping to win the backing of other club representatives ahead of tomorrow's meeting where the issue of holding talks with the government over what might be on offer in the event that the FAI was to abandon its stadium project will again be a major topic of discussion.
A motion urging the immediate initiation of such talks by the association's officers was narrowly defeated at Wednesday evening's Board of Management and the result prompted the resignation from the board yesterday of Galway United's John Byrne, a representative of the National League.
On Wednesday night Byrne felt that a deal he brokered, whereby some opponents of the Eircom Park scheme voted to allow it to proceed to planning in return for support for the motion on talks, was broken. As a result, he explained, he felt a responsibility to those whom he had persuaded to go along with the arrangement and had, therefore, to go.
The news of his departure was met with considerable disappointment on the part of his fellow league representative Ray Gallagher of Sligo Rovers who said yesterday that, in light of Byrne's decision he would be considering his own position on the board.
"John is a man of the highest integrity and if he feels that the circumstances merit going then I think it is something that I will have to think about too," he said. The man who has been the one of the driving forces behind Rovers's campaign to redevelop the Showgrounds was even more dismayed, though, by the outcome of the vote itself.
"In any other organisation I think it would be an obligation of directors who were undertaking a major project to find out and then set out for everyone to see what exactly the alternatives are. In the FAI, it seems, a state of complete ignorance is encouraged and given that so much money that really belongs to others is involved that is nothing short of extraordinary."
In reference to the night's other vote, the one that backed the recommendation of the officers that Eircom Park be allowed to proceed to planning, Gallagher added that "I'm a little surprised that Bernard is interpreting that as being such a ringing endorsement of the his policies." O'Byrne, meanwhile, continued to insist yesterday that the matter of funding was not a serious issue for the project which, he said, was still on course for completion.
Speaking on yesterday's edition of RTE Radio One's Morning Ireland the association's chief executive said that "money is not the issue here. The issue is internal politics within the FAI and the greater wider issue of politics with the other stadium issues that are around."
