While Shelbourne's Ollie Byrne continued to rewrite the rules of the old best-seller How to Win Friends and Influence People with his campaign to ensure that Longford Town field their strongest side against Bohemians this evening, it emerged that his club will benefit twice over as a result of the weekend's decision by the league's management committee to meddle with scheduled suspensions for this week.

Under the changes accepted by club representatives on Saturday, after a move initiated by Byrne, any suspensions due to take effect yesterday or next Tuesday can be served next season. But clubs who preferred to get their players' suspensions out of the way now have that option.

So not only will Dermot Keely have Pat Fenlon and Richie Foran available for this evening's potentially decisive league game against Shamrock Rovers, but Damien Richardson will be without either Tommy Dunne or his top scorer, Sean Francis, as the pair will be serving out bans.

With only a point separating the clubs, a Shelbourne win tonight and a defeat for Bohemians would mean that the Tolka Park club will retain their title, while any other combination of results would see the championship decided on Sunday when the clubs play Cork and Kilkenny respectively.

Longford manager Stephen Kenny, meanwhile, expressed his frustration at the continuing campaign by representatives from other clubs to oversee his team selection this evening, remarking: "People should realise that their problems are not my problems".

While refusing to criticise anyone directly, Byrne's comments on RTE radio on Monday evening, as well as his decision to contact the Longford club secretary concerning the issue, will not have pleased anybody in the midlands club's camp.

"It would be nice if people respected the fact that I have a job of my own to do here," said Kenny. "It would be insulting to my own players if I played the same team in the four games leading up to this club's first ever cup final. We have a lot of players of similar quality here and they deserve an opportunity, particularly when we have a number of players with knocks, as we do at the moment.

"The bottom line," he concluded, "is that the team may be different for our remaining games but they won't be inferior."