Shels v St Pats preview: If Paul Marney's registration form had arrived last summer at Merrion Square in a properly registered envelope and the five months of appeal and counter-appeal that his case has prompted had been avoided, it would be tempting to believe this evening's clash between Shelbourne and St Patrick's Athletic would be free of the tension that has accompanied the build-up to the top-of-the-table game. Be certain of one thing though, only a sucker would succumb.

Opinion on when Irish football's most bemusing feud kicked off differ, with some suggesting that the frostiness between the two clubs started when Shelbourne, by a strange set of circumstances, in effect ended up as their rivals' landlords at Harold's Cross a decade or so ago.

Others point to the split that developed over the campaign waged by Sam Hammam to bring the "Dublin Dons" to the Irish capital as the point when things took a turn for the worst.

What's certain, though, is that the difficulties that developed between Ollie Byrne and Pat Dolan during the build-up to the Champions League qualifying game between St Patrick's Athletic and Celtic at Tolka Park during the summer of 1998 infused the relationship with a bitterness that has never been absent from their public dealings since.

Four months after St Patrick's (who had drawn at Parkhead) lost 2-0 to Celtic in Dublin, Dolan was adamant that things might have turned out differently if there hadn't been a string of disputes with Shelbourne over the use of their ground in the week leading up to the game. "If things had gone better in the build-up to that game," he said, "I honestly believe that we would have beaten Celtic."

His references to Byrne in the same interview with this paper prompted the threat of legal action from the Shelbourne man and since then they've never looked back.

Somehow the two clubs have contrived to be on opposite sides of the fence in almost every debate of any significance in Irish football. With Wimbledon finally dispensed with, St Patrick's supported the move to build Eircom Park, while Shelbourne expressed a strong preference for the Government-backed alternative. Tolka Park came out in favour of summer soccer while those at Richmond were critical of the idea.

Then, when Shelbourne forged links with Manchester United, they were bitterly denounced for it by their southside rivals.

The war of words between the two clubs has been fought out at every possible opportunity and the columns, written by Dolan and Dermot Keely in the Star and Sun respectively, have regularly descended into a bizarre slanging match. After a particularly hectic exchange Dolan once described his opposite number as "a tinker". On hearing this Keely observed that Dolan had clearly intended to call him "a thinker but his diction let him down".

Things subsequently became particularly daft when Dolan alleged, after being sent off during his side's 3-1 defeat at Tolka that the area around his dugout had received additional watering which had caused his shoes and suit to become muddied and later there was an incident on the stairs leading to the dressing room involving an alleged push by Byrne on St Patrick's chairman Tim O'Flaherty.

Some months later at Richmond Byrne was on the receiving end of persistant taunting by Saints fans.

On top of all this then, came the Marney affair and there is no mistaking the depth of bad feeling it has provoked over the past few months with Shelbourne emerging as the only club to really pursue the issue of whether St Patrick's should be docked nine points. Rest assured, though, if that registration form had arrived the way it was supposed to back in August they'd be scrapping about something ahead of this evening's game. The only real question is what.