ALL that blood letting and for what? In the fall out of the association's mother of all council meetings and the departures of Louis Kilcoyne and Joe Delaney, it would seem that nothing much, will ultimately change.

The rest of the officer board, Pat Quigley, Michael Hyland and Des Casey, remain in situ and if anything the old cabal is likely to be strengthened by the time the dust has settled. Gas marks were still an optional extra when the junior power block, which delivered 15 votes en bloc to remove Kilcoyne and keep the other officers, swiftly moved to replace Delaney as vice president and treasurer, with his successor as chief security officer Bernard O'Byrne.

Just as politically adroit, as expected, was a wing of the old cabal which is jokingly referred to (by itself as well as everyone else) as the Montrose Mafia. It should be made abundantly clear at this juncture that the Montrose affiliates are utterly upstanding men.

Eddie Cox, the long standing Bray Wanderers delegate, had long since been talked off as Presidential material by Dr Tony O'Neill and here again little time was wasted in making his candidature known through favoured, unofficial avenues.

Sensing this, proponents of change who have long since felt disenfranchised by the power network within Merrion Square, sought to encourage Finbarr Flood's candidature. Flood had resigned, from all the FAI's committees in protest over the officer board's handling of various affairs in latter months.

As the former managing director of Guinness Ireland and current deputy chairman of the Labour Court, Flood came into the game with a certain gravitas which he has underlined in his two years as Shelbourne chairman.

Sadly, Flood has rejected overtures from several clubs and enlightened fellow administrators to stand in the forthcoming elections as the National League's nomination for vice president of the FAI and putative successor to Pat Quigley.

He will not even reassume his old positions on the FAI Council and executive council in the light of Ollie Byrne's resignation from the same last week. (Thus scuppering rumours that it was all part of a dastardly Shelbourne plan).

This is distressing though. No obvious alternative candidate with the credentials and the commitment to a radical overhaul of the FAI's outmoded structures springs to mind. St Patrick's Athletic have proved themselves pleasantly progressive for the first time in their history thanks in the main to the work of chief executive Pat Dolan and chairman Tim O'Flaherty, but he still has a largely unheralded profile.

The unsung Bohemians representative Donal Crowther is another widely respected administrator. How we could do with more straight, trustworthy footballing men like him but he is shy of the public attention that presidential status ultimately would bring.

Perhaps there is one out there but no other outstanding front man springs to mind apart from Flood. In the interim, we await to hear the final findings of auditors Bastow Charleton and the FAI's promise to bring in outside consultants who will recommend new management structures for the association in line with the 1990s as opposed to the 1930s. Then we await to see it the FAI implements them this summer.

One senses the wagons are being circled and that the old cabal will re emerge, wounded but not mortally so, and wiser for the experience. There is even talk of Louis Kilcoyne reviving his administrative career through the medium of a First Division club - as it's representative.

Supporters of Cox, and detractors of Flood, would claim that boardroom longevity within a National League club is proof of an administrator's bona fides, unlike a recent arrival from the business or commercial world.

Remarkably, the PFAI have succeeded in rewriting the controversial "multiplier" transfer system to the extent that signing on fees will be excluded when evaluating a players' worth by a co efficient (based on a players age) which will also be reduced. Henceforth therefore, a player that once who would have sought a signing on fee of £10,000 and wages of £180 per week will simply seek a signing on fee of £13,000 and wages of say, £100 per week.

Ricky O'Flaherty, the St Patrick's striker, has been chosen as the Opel/Soccer Writers' Player of the Month for March, during which time he helped maintain his club's unbeaten progress toward the double.

. Brendan Menton, the acting secretary of the FAI, will head a delegation of the association to London today where they will meet with representatives of Millwall FC regarding the vexed question of compensation for the termination of Mick McCarthy's contract at the First Division club.

Millwall maintain they are due £100,000 as compensation in the light of McCarthy's decision to take up the offer of Republic of Ireland manager last January. The FAI refute this, claiming they were never made aware of any compensatory claim in McCarthy's contract.