THE BLE have set their 1998 Congress as the target date to have ill place a new administrative structure which will include the long awaited appointment of a full-time general secretary.

The announcement, which was made by the head of the organisation's development committee, Dermot Nagle, at the BLE Congress over the weekend, provided an upbeat note on which to end what had been a stormy first day's business in Ballinasloe.

From the outset of formal business on Saturday, when national secretary Liam Hennessy's report was discussed, there was a succession of speakers from around the country who were critical of the way in which the organisation's administrative affairs had been handled over the past 12 months.

The manner in which the appointment of Ronnie Long to the newly created post of marketing manager occurred, with the then president only confirming his interest in the post after he had sat on a panel which had interviewed candidates, sparked a particularly heated debate on the floor.

Also under fire were the officials, primarily international secretary Christy Wall, seen to be responsible for the organisation of troubled recent trips to South Africa and Spain.

The process of team selection for the World cross-country championships in South Africa, during which John Downes and David Burke were first selected, then dropped and then reinstated - all in the month preceding the race - was raised again by concerned delegates while it was revealed that, due to an error on Wall's part, competitors at last weekend's European race walking Cup in Spain missed their connecting flight in London and had to pay for later flights out of their own pockets at the airport.

Wall offered delegates his apologies for the incident which, he said, arose out his simply mishearing the time of departure of the flight from London, but for some delegates this was seen as being just one of a succession of slip-ups committed by BLE management over the past year.

"We seem to stumble from one debacle to another," said Dublin delegate Pat Cassidy voicing a widely echoed sentiment while Gerry McGrath pointed out that "in the view of athletes, the management of this association is the enemy . . . we may not like the fact but that is the simple reality of the matter.

Despite the repeated expression of dissatisfaction, however, all of the organisation's officers putting themselves forward for re-election were successful, although it was Hennessy, who had been openly critical of the Long affair, who enjoyed the greatest margin of victory.

The proposal for the creation of a new general secretary's post within two years was, meanwhile greeted with considerable enthusiasm from delegates although Nagle cautioned the conference that the reorganisation would raise the BLE's annual administrative bill by nearly 50 per cent - from £150,000 per annum to around £220,000.

He said that considerable fund raising would need to be done if the new position was to be, sustainable.

The Minister for Sport, Bernard Allen, gave a commitment to delegates that the government would provide half of the cost of sending a team to the World junior championships in Sydney in August while he confirmed that broad agreement has already been reached between his department and the BLE on a number of other funding issues.

During yesterday's session, the Dublin Board called successfully for a clarification of the rules concerning the eligibility of non-nationals to compete in the association's national championships.

A move by Cork, Dublin and the Southern Region for BLE to propose the deletion of the word "amateur" from the title of the International Amateur Athletics Federation also received unanimous support.

Delegates agreed that a new, code of practise for national coaches, with particular reference to the recruitment of young athletes, should be introduced over the coming year.

Paddy McGovern reported on the ongoing talks with the country's other national athletics body, the NACA. Commenting that relations with the NACA were now on a very strong footing McGovern concluded that "I don't feel that the day when there is only one athletics organisation in this country is very far away."

At the conference it was announced that the Ulster Sports Council and Northern Ireland AAF had decided to open the Ulster Athletic Championships at the Antrim Forum on July 6th to participants from the province's nine counties for the first time and clubs for the area involved were urged to support the initiative.