Ammanford AFC should see their fate sealed within the next 48 hours.

The club will learn whether they are to spend the next year in Division Three of the Welsh League or retain their status as a second tier side.

Ironically, it is the very rule which has been instigated to ensure their drop into the third tier which might prove their saviour.

Cwmbran Celtic, the club who dropped from Division One to Division Two – thereby causing Ammanford’s shift down a division began an appeal at 11am today (Tuesday, October 14) with the QC overseeing the hearing announcing he would set out his judgement within 48 hours.

Ammanford found themselves at the wrong of some shambolic league administration at the end of last term when, with the season all but over, the League of Wales announced plans to relegate four teams from each of Division One and Two to balance the league pyramid following the complex promotion and relegation rules of the Welsh Premier League.

The move came despite league rules clearly stating that only three teams would be relegated from each.

A series of meetings over the intervening six months appeared to culminate two weeks ago when the league took the extraordinary step of rewriting their own rules to limit the number of teams in each division to 16 rather than base team numbers on pre-defined relegation and promotion procedures.

The league decision was even more infuriating for both Ammanford and Cwmbran when officials announced the new rule was to be back-dated by 12 months.

The relegation of Afan Lido from the Premier League into Division One at the end of last term caused a ripple affect down the league which the new ruling was able to set in stone.

A plea by Ammanford to take the decision to a tribunal of sporting arbitration was rejected as “out of time” by the Welsh FA.

However, should Cwmbran’s lawyers successfully argue that Celtic’s demotion was “unfair and outside the bounds of natural justice” – as stated in one of the many earlier hearings, the move would leave Division Two with just 15 teams – one short of the league’s new rules.

Such a situation would almost certainly see Ammanford re-instated to Division Two to “balance the books”.

“The whole situation is completely shambolic,” Ammanford’s John Thomas told the Guardian.

“It is amateurish beyond belief.

“The back-dated rules now state that the second division must contain 16 teams.

“If Cwmbran win their appeal and go back up to the first division then it seems the league will have no choice under their own rules but to reinstate us to Division Two.”

Ammanford, now nine or ten games behind their rivals wherever they end up, refused to play a Division Three fixture last weekend under legal advice.

An online petition calling for both Ammanford and Cwmbran to remain in their Divisions Two and One respectively can be signed at http://ow.ly/CIYmU