Last night's call by Shelbourne Chairman Gary Brown for FAI President Pat Quigley and Chief Executive Bernard O'Byrne to resign over their handling of the Eircom Park affair has highlighted the increasingly bitter struggle for control over the direction of Irish football.
Mr Brown said Mr Quigley and Mr O'Byrne were leading the FAI "up the garden path, one which is strewn with broken glass for the association".
Mr Quigley and Mr O'Byrne have repeatedly expressed their determination to press ahead with the building of Eircom Park - and decline the Government's invitation to join the Stadium Ireland project - despite the possibility the Eircom Park project may entail incurring huge debts and could mean handing the lion's share of any eventual profits over to co-investors Davy Hickey Properties.
Mr Brown's view, which appears to echo opinions expressed by FAI Treasurer Brendan Menton as well as officials from other clubs, is that to pursue Eircom Park on these conditions would financially cripple domestic football, since it will mean the FAI will have no money to invest in anything other than loan repayments.
Meanwhile, the government is offering £11 million to the Eircom League to join its Stadium Ireland project.
Quite apart from the financial aspects of Eircom Park, Mr Byrne is disappointed by the way in which the talks are being conducted. "The debate has become very entrenched... and it has spilled over into an issue of personalities, which, even more regrettably, is being fought out in the media - and that shouldn't be," he said.
Mr Brown's comments come in the same week as Shelbourne filed a vote of no confidence in two other FAI officials, Mr Pat Kelly and Mr Wayne Atley, over a separate incident. The club reportedly believes these two officials broke the FAI's own rules by appointing Hugh O'Byrne to referee last weekend's cup tie between Shels and Derry City.
Shelbourne's club secretary today told ireland.com: "I suppose as the highest-profile club in the country we have to show a certain amount of leadership. . . the fact is that all of us clubs have to move with the times and get our houses in order. . . and the FAI has to do the same".
"We've nothing personal against anyone in the FAI, where there are genuine and sincere people, but the fact is they have got to get things in order."