SOCCER:Cork City officials were informed prior to leaving Switzerland last night that the Court of Arbitration for Sport had rejected their contention that the Fifa rules which have prevented Gareth Farrelly and Colin Healy from playing competitive football for the club should be set aside.
The pair will now become available to the Turner's Cross club on July 1st in accordance with the international body's existing statutes and the details of CAS's ruling are unlikely to be revealed to the respective parties until then.
It is believed, however, that the court essentially upheld Fifa's right to stipulate a minimum length for player contracts despite the fact that both English clubs and British law allow for contracts of shorter duration.
The ruling comes as a setback for City who had hoped that the players might start to get some competitive action under the belts again over the next couple of weeks.
It is a more significant blow, however, for the Professional Footballers' Association in England which had underwritten the costs of the case in the hope of overcoming what has effectively become a significant barrier to the movement of its members to overseas leagues, particularly those played through the summer.
"I'm disappointed, as is everybody who was involved with the case from the club's side," said John Kettle of Mason Hayes and Curran, the legal firm that represented the PFA and Cork City in yesterday's hearing.
"In a sense it feels like we hammered them nil all because Fifa took a bit of a bashing and they were implicitly told to address the situation.
"They were also instructed to make the process whereby they grant exemptions to these rules more transparent because as things stand, nobody understands them.
"Another indication that they took on board a great deal of what we said is that they didn't award costs against us, which is unusual in these cases, Fifa will have to pay their own.
"But of course, none of that changes the fact that we did lose and that's very disappointing because we felt that the unfairness of the present situation should have outweighed the certainty of the rules."
Unless Fifa now decides to change their rules off their own bat the decision means that Irish clubs will have to be a good deal more cautious regarding the status of players signed from Britain during the Irish close season.
The Slovak Football Federation has confirmed that the Euro 2008 qualifier between Slovakia and the Republic of Ireland on September 8th will take place at the Slovan Stadion, Tehelné Pole in Bratislava.
No time has yet been officially fixed for the kick-off.
The FAI have been allocated 2,500 tickets, roughly 10 per cent of the stadium's capacity for this game.
The association said yesterday that because of the size of the allocation the FAI it would be able to take ticket orders from non-FAI block bookers for the game.
