Roddy Doyle recalled with some amusement a few years back on British television the night when he and some friends hatched a scheme to buy St Patrick's Athletic and provide the funds they reckoned would be required to mount a title-winning campaign.

The punchline to the yarn was that the investors would then play either themselves or their children in the following season's European campaign.

For all the talk amongst those close to the game here of wage inflation and fantastical compensation claims, it's still easy to see how a casual observer, more used to reading about the likes of Damien Duff's transfer fee or Roy Keane's weekly wage, might feel the financial stakes in the Eircom League are so low as to be laughable.

Shelbourne's dismay over the prospect of being landed with a bill of close to €40,000 in compensation to UCD for their role in the development of Alan Cawley during his two seasons at Belfield has served to underline just how grim things are, with one of the country's leading clubs desperate to avoid paying a figure scarcely equivalent to a couple of days' pay for a leading Irish player in England.

At the heart of the conflict are differing interpretations of the league's rule 19.23 (Shelbourne insist the rule's wording requires Cawley to have been a UCD player for two full seasons before compensation would be required and that he fell short of this by a few weeks.)

With crowds in the low thousands, sponsorship of real significance scarce and television revenues almost non-existent, the scale of their difficulty is obvious enough.

What remains frustrating about the league, however, is the regularity with which the clubs, major and minor, manage to exacerbate their own problems. The licensing scheme, for instance, has caused so many short-term difficulties primarily because the practicalities of what was being done were so poorly thought out by those involved, including most of the clubs.

Then there is the fact nearly all clubs pay more to their players than they can afford, something highlighted recently not only by Brian Kerr but also by the Professional Footballers Association of Ireland's Fran Gavin who identified the inability of clubs to meet the commitments they make to their own players as one of the daily issues he deals with most.

But the Cawley case, one in which Shelbourne may be required to pay perhaps half as much again for a promising but unproven 22-year-old midfielder as it did a year ago for a proven goalscorer in Jason Byrne (from Bray), would suggest the apparent inability of the league (which, of course, is run by the clubs) to come up with a clear and effective set of rules.

This, perhaps, is the league's most significant problem. Barely a month seems to pass without some dispute arising over either the wording of, or thinking behind, some league rule.

In this instance both are at issue with Shelbourne claiming the word "full" is missing from the current version of the regulation in question and the PFAI, who feel it is implied, also arguing any requirement for money to change hands for an out-of-contract player is effectively a restriction of trade and therefore contrary to European law. The latter point is bound up in the broader issue of compensation and solidarity payments, a system largely governed by a deal struck between UEFA, FIFA and the EU.

Though senior clubs here have so far sought to embrace only those aspects of the deal beneficial to them, the agreement has already yielded considerable benefits for Irish football as schoolboy clubs here have become entitled to a small share of the sometimes huge fees paid for their former players.

The players in these deals could argue the payments to their previous clubs affect them adversely as they will be factored into the cost of a deal by the buying club - in the case of Duff's move to Chelsea the amount involved was about £850,000. Thankfully nobody to date has made an issue of it.

The figure for Cawley's move is based on a requirement that a tribunal set compensation at four times the net salary received by the player during his last season at his previous club. The formula is ridiculous, taking no account of the time the player spent with the club, what it actually contributed to his development as a player or how much of that effort he repaid in the form of first-team appearances.

Gavin has hinted at action to challenge the principle involved but it would be better if the players' union settled for sitting down again with representatives of the league and clubs and came up with a system that offered something to clubs for their contribution towards a player's development while allowing the footballer to get on with his career, something they set out to do four years ago when the same three groups collaborated on drafting the current regulation.

None of which will materially affect the Cawley case which seems likely to become the latest in a long line of inter-club disputes to end up in the courts.

If that happens it would do no more than confirm what we already know, that the game here is utterly incapable of sorting out its own problems. If nothing is done to prevent the start of next season being blighted by some similar row it would suggest that for all the talk of progress little or nothing is really changing.

It will, of course, also reinforce the view of those sceptics who feel the league generates the bulk of its entertainment value in the form of late-night laughs.