SOCCER/NATIONAL LEAGUE: Officials at St Patrick's Athletic said yesterday that they would respond to allegations that they played Ugandan international Mbabazi five times at the start of the season while he was unregistered at some point today.

It had been expected that they would be in contact with league commissioner Roy Dooney yesterday, but the club made it clear that they felt more time was required to consider the matter.

While pointedly failing to deny the allegations, a number of Richmond Park officials yesterday suggested that any attempt to pursue the Mbabazi registration question would "open a can of worms". At least one hinted that the club may present evidence of wrong doing by rivals Shelbourne.

Indeed, Pat Dolan and Tim O'Flaherty are reported to have visited Merrion Square on Tuesday afternoon and inspected registration forms for a dozen Shelbourne players while the possibility that there may be problems with the payment of fines in regard to players found to have committed disciplinary offences has also been touched on.

Last night, Shelbourne's Ollie Byrne insisted that his club "has nothing to hide" on either count and said that he has a specific arrangement with league treasurer Declan O'Luanaigh under which all fines due from the club are deducted from monies that are owed to the club in respect of television coverage.

For St Patrick's, though, the most immediate concern is how they might avoid the imposition of a 15-point deduction as a result of the error over Mbabazi. Barring the club being able to persuade the league, as they did in the Paul Marney case, that they are innocent of any real wrongdoing and should therefore be subjected to a fine, it is widely expected that a hearing will be held by tomorrow at which the more severe penalty will be imposed. It will then be up to the club to initiate the appeals procedure.

Dooney, meanwhile, insisted yesterday that he would not be resigning over his role in the affair. "I take the view that I came into a job where there was an horrendous mess of a rule book and a culture of the clubs ignoring it," he said.

"I feel that there is a good deal of work to be done on sorting it out and at the last management committee meeting I presented an overall business plan and marketing strategy that included a suggested investment in new technology which would be aimed at sorting out the registration system.

"I have also been working towards a major overhaul of the rule book at this year's a.g.m.. In the meantime, I have acted with the best interests of the league in mind at all times."

He acknowledged, however, that there are, what he described as, "some vultures circling".

The first division promotion race was also thrown into some uncertainty yesterday when it was announced that a meeting of the league's protests committee had decided to deduct three points from Waterford United as a result of Noel Hunt having played for the club against Dublin City while he too was unregistered.

The decision left both clubs insisting that they would appeal with the Dubliners claiming that they would prefer the game, which they lost 2-1, to be replayed and United maintaining that they had received verbal assurances from the league that the player was clear to play.

The original dispute relating to Hunt, who is actually a Shamrock Rovers player, centred in whether he was entitled to embark on a second loan spell at the RSC so soon after being recalled by Rovers and playing one game - the league cup tie against Longford.

While investigating the matter, however, it is claimed that members of protests committee discovered that, due to an error, the player had not in fact been registered at all since January 20th, after which he played five games for United.

The club's chairman, Gerry O'Brien, disputed this yesterday and insisted that the player had only been used because of the assurances received from Merrion Square.