The Irish FA’s Junior and Youth Cup Committee is set to meet tonight (Thursday) to discuss the issues surrounding the Junior Cup semi-final.

IFA President David Martin has ordered the IFA Junior Committee to revisit their decision to let Bessbrook United remain in the Irish Junior Cup despite the Armagh club having made what looked like a registration blunder.

Bessbrook United had defeated Enniskillen Rangers 3-1 in the semi-final of the competition but a player eligibility issue was then raised.

The IFA Junior Committee initially ruled that Bessbrook United would remain in the Irish Junior Cup and this led to Enniskillen Rangers lodging an appeal with the IFA at the end of last week.

Rangers received confirmation on Monday that their appeal would be ruled out of order by the Chairperson of the Appeals Committee as it was a third party appeal.

However, at Monday night’s IFA Senior Council Meeting Neil Jardine, Chairman of the Fermanagh and Western Football League, raised the matter of the Junior Committee decision under any other business.

And IFA President David Martin ordered that the Junior Committee revisit their decision. It is understood that the Junior Committee acted outside their remit in making their original decision as they went against advice from IFA staff that the player was ineligible.

The issue is over the validity of the players registration on the IFA’s central registration system.

It is believed that at the initial meeting, the committee voted in favour of Bessbrook remaining in the competition on the grounds of rule 4 in the Junior Cup rules of the IFA’s handbook that all players must be registered to play with their club in their respective leagues.

This is the way the Fermanagh and Western operates but then all these registrations are entered onto the IFA central registration system by the league registrar. It is claimed this did not happen with the Bessbrook player in question.

However, the IFA’s rules also states that all clubs must satisfy themselves that all their players are correctly registered and this means that they should be on the IFA’s central registration system which the secretary of all clubs has access to.

The decision that the Junior Committee will now have to make if they throw Bessbrook out of the competition, is whether or not to reinstate Enniskillen Rangers.

A similar situation arose in the Intermediate Cup semi-final between Portstewart and Queen’s. Portstewart won the tie but were ruled to have played an ineligible player.

The IFA on that occasion threw Portstewart out of the competition and reinstated Queen’s.