SOCCER:  St Patrick's Athletic were last night catapulted to the top of the eircom league's Premier Division after it was decided that the club should get back the nine points deducted in late August.

The arbitrator in the matter, Kilkenny City chairman Liam Reidy, who is a senior counsel, opted to restore the points deducted as a result of Paul Marney being played in three league games while not properly registered and reimposed the original penalty of €1,200 (it was then £1,000).

His decision was met with predictable satisfaction by the club's officials and equally unsurprising anger from Shelbourne.

St Patrick's president Tim O'Flaherty said that he was "elated" with the outcome and added that he was delighted to see that "common sense has finally prevailed".

But Shelbourne manager Dermot Keely described the decision as being "nothing short of a scandal".

Roy Dooney, the league's commissioner who was a member of the original disciplinary committee that considered the case said simply that he hoped that this latest ruling "will mark the end of the story".

"The fact is that after this ruling we have a situation in which four or even five clubs are in with a real chance of winning the title and the hope is that we can allow an exciting run in to the league campaign to unfold on the pitch. It's all been something of a cloud hanging over us for a very long time now and it would be nice to think that the whole thing is finally behind us."

It's not yet entirely clear whether it will be the end, though, as a legal challenge by a club that did not agree to be bound by the outcome of the arbitration still remains a possibility. Shelbourne, for one, will meet today to decide what action to take. Yesterday's decision, though, is undoubtedly a huge step forward for a team whose form on the field is at last accurately reflected by the league table.

"Every point that we've earned this season has been hard earned," said Pat Dolan after hearing the news, "and we are delighted now that they're all going to count for something.

"To be fair, though, all of our players have been very strong through all of this and I'm delighted for all of them, none more so than young Paul Marney whose name would always have been associated with this incident in spite of the fact that he bore none of the responsibility whatsoever."

In his findings on the case Reidy accepted the claim by St Patrick's that Marney's registration had been sent to the league by unregistered post and observed that, in his opinion "there cannot be a more innocuous or technical breach of the provisions of Rule 16 than in this instance".

He also maintained that, given the regularity with which the rule of the registration of players is breached in one way or another a strict interpretation would result in a large number of players being declared ineligible to play in the league.

Reidy concluded that there were, therefore, exceptional circumstances which justified the original decision to impose a £1,000 fine rather than deduct the points, a ruling that was subsequently successfully appealed to the FAI by Shelbourne.

While Dolan last night welcomed the opportunity to concentrate on the remaining league games his rival at Shelbourne was clearly furious.

"There's absolutely no such thing as 'spirit of the rules'," he said. "Why do they bother putting rules in their book? It's absurd! I'll tell you," he added, "there's a lot of people who constantly whinge that this league is run by Shels, but this decision proves that there's one rule for St Patrick's and another for the rest of us".

Dolan, on the other hand, insisted that justice had finally been done and that the club was now in a strong position in the league.

"People never mentioned us as being amongst the real contenders but we felt that we had some good young players as well as some useful more experienced ones. We earned all of our points on the pitch and so to lose any of them like this would have been terribly disappointing. Now that we've got them back we're top with 10 games remaining and I think that the players deserve some credit for that."

St Patrick's, in fact, now replace Shelbourne at the top of the table with the Inchicore side enjoying a two-point advantage over Keely's side and a four- point cushion over Shamrock Rovers in third place. As luck would have it Dolan's side must visit Tolka Park when the league resumes after this weekend's break for the third round of the Carlsberg FAI Cup.