St Patrick's Athletic officials have insisted they will carefully consider their options before responding to the news that the club's appeal against a 15-point deduction imposed for improperly registering Charles Mbabazi had been turned down.

General manager Gary Branigan said that, while the club was considering its next step, it intended to wait until all of the details relating to the recent league review of all of its registration forms had been made public.

In its judgment on the appeal, the three-man panel, chaired by former leading trade union official Bill Atlee, stated its verdict had been reached in the knowledge that it was the intention of the league to ensure that "when it is found that players had played in contravention of Rule 16A, then the rule shall be fully applied".

This would involve deducting three points from the clubs for each game in which an improperly registered player had been involved.

With rumours continuing to circulate as to how a number of clubs might be affected if the rules were to be rigorously applied, it seems that St Patrick's continue to believe that the situation may yet become so unmanageable that an amnesty might have to be granted.

Manager Pat Dolan, meanwhile, told RTÉ television last night that: "If Rule 16A is going to be applied then we will accept that, but we have a commitment from Brendan Menton that it will be applied fairly in all cases and we'll look forward to seeing that it is done both fairly and transparently.

"So far, we are the only ones who have had this rule applied. Clearly the claims by some other clubs that all of their registrations are perfect are not true.

"Nobody has been crowned champions yet, and to hear Shelbourne, a club that finished with five points less than us, portray themselves as victims in all of this defies belief."

On Monday night, league chairman Michael Hyland told representatives of all the clubs that around 1,200 registration forms had been reviewed and that, some rather minor transgressions aside, little of consequence had been uncovered.

Shelbourne officials have claimed that this was, jn effect, an end to the matter. But last night St Patrick's insisted that Roy Dooney was prevented from delivering a detailed report on all of the transgressions uncovered. It is this document which they now are demanding be published.

Somewhat ironically, Hyland's line appears to be based on the arbitration ruling from the Paul Marney case, in which Liam Reidy SC accepted the claim by St Patrick's that the club had made an honest attempt to register its player and on that basis decided that no points should be deducted. It now appears that the ruling is set to be used as a precedent under which a large number of other "minor" transgressions may be overlooked.

What is, in any case, unclear is when any further discussion on the matter might take place as there are no scheduled meetings of the league before the a.g.m. on the 27th of this month in Dublin.

If the matter is not addressed until then it would cut severely into the month that the Inchicore club has to decide whether it again wished to opt for FAI-backed arbitration on the dispute, although officials at Shelbourne are of the opinion that they can prevent such arbitration taking place.

• The Professional Footballers Association of Ireland has issued its teams of the year for the past season, and St Patrick's fare best of the premier division sides with three of the club's players making the association's first 11.

Colm Foley, Paul Osam and Mbabazi are in the side which will be honoured at next week's annual awards ceremony in Dublin. Osam also makes the six-man short list for the association's coveted player of the year award.