We had a brief return to the bad old days at Belfield Park last Monday night when the powers that be failed to appoint a team of officials for UCD's re-arranged clash with Waterford United.

It was a farcical situation that you could never picture happening in any other league. Fair play to top whistler Paul Tuite, who left the comfort of his warm Lucan home to dash out to Belfield to ref the game.

There was an unusual apology released the following day. One journalist described it in his paper as a 'grovelling apology'.

I felt it was half-hearted, more a statement of fact than anything else. The person at fault was not named.

Back at Belfield, several Waterford fans considered the option of asking for permission to play a five-a-side game on the pitch.

A fair ask, considering, at that stage, it looked like they had come a long way for nothing.

However, Mr Tuite and his assistants arrived to save the day and that possibility fell by the wayside.

It's the first major howler like this since the infamous 'Ref who didn't turn up' incident of 1986. St Patrick's Athletic turned up for a game in Athlone, but the ref didn't. He didn't know about the game.

Pat's' boss at the time was the great Brian Kerr. Brian, along with Noel O'Reilly, was among the assembled gentry at Belfield Park last Monday, 24 hours before his contract was not renewed by the FAI.

I don't know if any of the 10 who passed judgement on Brian were there. I didn't spot any of them anyway.