David McMillan: FAI took wrong approach to St Patrick's Athletic postponement

David McMillan feels the FAI took the wrong approach to the postponement of St Patrick's Athletic's SSE Airtricity Men's Premier Division clash with Dundalk last Sunday.

The game was set take place between the two legs of Pat's Conference League play-off clash with Istanbul Basaksehir, but was postponed on Friday for what the FAI called, 'a unique opportunity' for two clubs from the league to be involved in Europe until Christmas.

The Inchicore club have never qualified for the group stage of a European competition, but Thursday's gutsy scoreless draw at Tallaght, where they had the better chances to score, has given them a fighting chance heading to Wednesday's second leg in Turkey.

Saints manager Stephen Kenny had been strong on his belief that the game with his former club Dundalk should have been postponed before the first leg at Tallaght, calling it "insane" and "hard to fathom".

And he doubled down on his view after his side earned the impressive draw, suggesting that if the FAI is "serious and ambitious" about Irish clubs progressing in Europe, then they needed to intervene and postpone the game.

Less than 24 hours later, that's exactly what happened.

Dundalk were not impressed. Manager Jon Daly, who started the season in charge of the Super Saints before being fired in March, called the decision "farcical" in a statement released by the club.

"From a football point of view, we will have gone 21 days without a competitive game," Daly continued.

"That is completely unacceptable at a stage of the season where we have just nine fixtures to play.

"The issue of sporting integrity also has to be called into question. Clubs in and around us have already had - and will have - the benefit of playing clubs on the back of European