Emmet Malone on Soccer: It's six months this week since Genesis caused a stir by calling for a dramatic reorganisation of the Eircom League, which, it concluded, was simply unsustainable in its present form.

Half a year on, that stark assessment has just received what looks like a significant endorsement in the shape of last week's tangle between the country's biggest club, Shelbourne, and the Revenue.

Despite a widespread acceptance that change is required, however, there remains considerable concern amongst club officials that they have been excluded from the process of translating the report's recommendations into more tangible proposals and exasperation that clubs have no idea whether the points their teams have been playing for in recent weeks will have any serious bearing on what division they end up in next year.

The decision to wind up the league in its current form at the end of the season and to institute a new competition, one more directly controlled by the FAI, has, on the face of it, given Merrion Square a bit of room for manoeuvre. But the move must still receive the support of two thirds of the league's clubs at an egm, scheduled for mid-June.

There is an acceptance on pretty much every side that when clubs see the specifics and weigh up how they will fare under the changes, enough of them will back the project and leave those behind it with little alternative but to hammer out just the sort of compromise deal that has been the hallmark (and, many would argue, downfall) of the league in the past.

Some of those close to the process have reportedly suggested that, contrary to previous reports, sporting criteria will be the dominant factor when it comes time to weighing up clubs' claims to a place in the top flight.

Remarkably, though, it will be the middle of next month before the actual substance of what is envisaged will be made available. In the meantime, an implementation committee made up of officers and officials is driving matters forward. Clubs are not represented on this body and a second committee, made up of three club representatives from each division, is apparently waiting to be given something to consider before it meets again.

When Genesis suggested in September while this was "make or break time" for the league, it also represented an opportunity to "be radical," few could bring themselves to disagree, but even then the timeframe the report set for the transformation of the league - in time for the start of next season - seemed highly ambitious.

Now, despite a management committee vote that the association clearly feels covers it legally, several see it as entirely unreasonable that they might be either relegated or deprived of promotion at the end of this year because of factors unconnected with their performance on the pitch. Several raised the possibility of taking the matter up with the courts if they feel unfairly treated.

For all the potential difficulties, though, there is lingering optimism within Merrion Square that clubs will simply bite the bullet and the proposed changes will achieve the required levels of support over the summer months.

A great deal will depend on the detail of what they propose, however, and how it impacts on a small group of clubs who already feel marginalised.

With this in mind the document put in front of clubs for consideration next month may not be nearly so radical as the people at Genesis envisaged. It seems, for instance, that sporting criteria will be the major consideration for initial membership of the new league's top flight but that five seasons rather than just one will be taken into account.

Tough new targets for infrastructural and organisational improvements will also be set but a time frame of three to five years will be allowed to meet these requirements and those who fail will only then, it is said, be obliged by the terms of their "participation agreements" to accept "severe punishments".

The question of whether the new premier division consists of 10 or 12 sides has apparently yet to be resolved and the geographical spread of top flight clubs - so central to the recommendations of Genesis - "successful teams operating in all of the major population centres" - will now be achieved "with time" it is said.

The hope is this sort of "play now, pay tomorrow" arrangement will go down sufficiently well with the membership for the proposals to go through.

Critics, however, suggest that in their watered down form, the proposals amount to little more than the completion of a merger process initiated more than a decade ago. Better sponsorship, more effective administration and enhanced television coverage have all been achieved without the need to entirely extinguish the league's independence and they question whether the new structure - and just about everything else likely to be on the table in June - might have been achieved anyway by the association through existing regulatory and licensing procedures.

One of those taking a rather neutral stand observes that John Delaney has pursued a "high-risk strategy" in pursuing the merger and all of the wider reforms with quite so much speed. To date, the FAI chief executive has played his cards well in the area of internal reform and, it seems, the centralisation of power within the game here although almost every step forward has come at a price.

This time, however, those who stand to lose out in the shake-up may well view the stakes as somewhat higher from their standpoint.

It could, then, prove to be Delaney's toughest sales job yet.