The disagreement over whether the previous incumbent had jumped or been pushed may have still been raging as the team went through their paces on the Dalymount pitch last night. But what was clear was that Turlough O'Connor and Roddy Collins, rather than Joe McGrath and Eamonn Collins, will lead Bohemians into this evening's televised game against Shamrock Rovers.

McGrath, as he had said he would, turned up at the session but in the end there was no real confrontation. The man who returned from New Zealand to take charge of Bohemians asked if he was to take training and was told by club secretary Gerry Cuff that he wasn't. He then cleared his desk and left with Collins amid talk of legal action.

Inside, as the players kept to themselves, O'Connor and Roddy Collins insisted that the political side of McGrath's departure was a matter for club officials. O'Connor, who had made it abundantly clear that he was unhappy with the way his own "retirement" from the manager's job was handled at the start of the year, was, he said, "just back for the football".

"The club is in a very difficult position and I was approached and asked if I could help out," he said. "Obviously I feel sorry for Joe but he could have stayed on if he had wanted to. He decided not to and now Roddy and myself have a huge job to get on with, starting with the game against Rovers."

Roddy Collins has been appointed team manager and O'Connell is general manager. But Collins will fill the role of assistant to O'Connor.

Collins remarked that, while the events of the previous couple of days had been unfortunate, "that's football". "I went through something very similar at Bangor but football is full of surprises and I've been offered a job that no man in his right mind would turn down, so here I am."

McGrath said he would wait a few days before deciding on his next move, but a visit to a solicitor's office would appear to be high on his "to do" list after the weekend.

The former New Zealand manager's reign at Dalymount began to crumble on Monday night when a meeting of the club's Management Committee voted 17-0 to alter the management structure on the playing side. McGrath reportedly told Cuff, and then O'Connor at training the following evening, that he could not accept these changes before seeing out his contract.

The club's position, Cuff insisted last night, was that the reorganisation would not affect McGrath's financial arrangements but O'Connor, in addition to handling issues like signings and contracts, was to have the final say on team selections.

This, hardly surprisingly, proved hard for McGrath to swallow but after considering his position he replied yesterday by fax to a letter that Cuff had delivered to his home on Monday night. In his reply to the letter that stated the club's attitude, McGrath said he intended to continue in his role as manager for the duration of his contract, which had 20 months to run.

The club, which had by then agreed to O'Connor's decision to replace McGrath with Collins, sent a fax back making it clear that, in their view, he had effectively resigned the previous evening when O'Connor informed him of the new arrangements at training.

"I find the situation incredible," said McGrath last night. "The club appear to have appointed a new manager without having anything in writing to say that the old one was gone. Now it appears that I've been sacked, which has never happened to me in my life before, and when I'm quite willing to carry on."

Cuff maintained that the club's poor start was only part of the reason that changes were necessary. "The whole club has mushroomed over the last couple of years and with the redevelopment of the ground we are about to embark on a business venture that needed to be divorced from the playing side, so having somebody in charge of that whole side of the club seemed like a good idea anyway."

McGrath said he was unconvinced that the team's poor start in the league - they have one point from five games - is the only reason for his departure either. With time, though, and a more settled team - he had used 21 players in the five matches - he felt that things would have improved on the field.

After just nine games, it seems that Tony O'Connell and others who run the club didn't share his confidence.