RUGBY: Frankie Sheahan will learn the outcome of his appeal against a two-year suspension imposed by the ERC following a positive test for the prohibited substance salbutamol today, perhaps around lunchtime.

In a surprise, and it seems promising devolpment, it was revealed at 10 p.m. last night that the Appeal Committee had concluded hearing evidence as well as its own deliberations, but would not communicate their verdict until today.

The Appeal Committee, which consists of Jeff Blackett (chairman, England), Jeff Probyn (England) and Dr Roger Evans (Wales) had been hearing evidence since 3.30 p.m., breaking up for 15 minutes at 7.15 p.m., and went into recess at almost 9 p.m. Sheahan and his legal team were not called back in until almost 10 p.m., whereupon the ERC press officer Diarmaid Murphy divulged that the committee had finished hearing evidence and reached a decision.

"That will be communicated in a statement today and both sides have agreed that there will no further comment," concluded Murphy.

To expedite matters, it was agreed at the outset that there was no need to re-admit any submissions from the original Judicial Tribunal which handed out the two-year ban. The hearing did not begin until after 3.30 p.m. and the co-ordinator of the medical evidence on Sheahan's behalf, a Cork-based doctor of clinical pharmacology Brendan Buckley, was still giving his opening submission when they took their first break at 7.15 p.m.

The first signs of white smoke came shortly afterwards when the Munster press officer Pat Geraghty emerged from the ERC headquarters in Huguenot House on St Stephen's Green and said that the case was "unlikely to be resolved tonight".

Sheahan, who takes ventolin (which contains salbutamol) for his asthma, had arrived at the ERC headquarters shortly after 2.30 p.m. with his parents Frank senior and Catherine, his brother Jonathan, as well as his legal team, senior counsel Paul Gallagher, junior counsel John Lacey and his solicitor Paul Derham. They then adjourned to the Council Chamber for the start of the hearing at 3.30 p.m.

The tribunal had found that the player's level of (salbutamol) was 20 times higher in the sample collected after the semi-final between Munster and Toulouse, compared with a sample collected from the player after the quarter-final game against Leicester. The tribunal found that it "cannot with conscience conclude that the player has satisfied us, on the balance of probabilities, that he administered himself with only eight puffs of ventolin containing salbutamol for the purpose of properly treating and/ or preventing his asthma and/or exercise-induced asthma."

However, the Appeal Committee yesterday reportedly accepted evidence that Sheahan's levels of salbutamol were purely the result of inhalation. Dr Buckley then went on to outline the medical evidence to support the claim that Sheahan's high levels of salbutamol were the result of the extreme dehydration he suffered in the Toulouse semi-final.

As part of Dr Buckley's opening submission, Henry Chrystyn, a professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of Bradford and an international authority on salbutamol, gave telephone evidence from the Canaries (where he is currently on holiday) in which he argued that dehydration could have dramatically changed the concentration of Sheahan's urine and thus substantially increased the level of salbutamol in his system.

Chrystyn has published a paper on the urinary excretion of salbutamol post-inhalation.

The hearing resumed after a break at 7.30 p.m., when the Munster team doctor Mick Shinkwin outlined the extreme dehydration Sheahan suffered during and after the semi-final. Others expected to give evidence as part of Sheahan's appeal were Professor Muiris Fitzgerald, a respiratory physician in Earlsfort Terrace in UCD, Professor Brian Keogh, an expert in renal (kidneys) medicine, Dr Reggie Spelman of the Irish Medical News Magazine, who has written articles arguing that inhaled salbutamol is not performance enhancing and Professor Perry Leary. However, the committee appear to have agreed that they did not need to hear their evidence.

Alan Gaffney, the Munster coach, had also been in attendance to verify that there had been an administrative error in the form which Sheahan had mistakenly omitted to tick the box stating that he was taking ventolin, which contains salbutamol, for his asthmatic condition, but this, too, had been accepted by the Appeal Committee.