Reckoning is unavoidable for Delaney
FOR an organisation once described as a constantly exploding clown car, the FAI is showing a rare resilience in its defence of John Delaney. That marvellous description does justice to a body that was a national laughing stock long before Delaney became its chief executive, but the joke stopped being funny long ago.
The latest controversy involving Delaney looked serious enough to end his time with the association, but the establishment of a new role for him has been accompanied by a fierce defence waged on his behalf by clubs and councils within Irish soccer.
On Wednesday came the most brazen act of resistance, when Sport Ireland chief John Treacy revealed the board of the FAI had written to his organisation.
Its president explained that the FAI would not be in a position to explain the circumstances of Delaney’s extraordinary loan to his employers, until a review it has initiated is completed.
This was not another instance of an exploding exhaust or the doors falling off the clown car.
It was, rather, brass-necked defiance of Sport Ireland, the body charged with administering sport in this country and ensuring that any taxpayers money spent by bodies is accounted for properly.
After years of haplessness, it appears the FAI are showing some resolve now, and they will not easily surrender their leader.
A press release issued by the FAI half an hour after the end of Mick McCarthy’s first game back in charge of the national team announced the redeployment of Delaney. That was on Saturday, March 23. A letter on March 25 from the interim chief executive, Rea Walshe, was the first notice Sport Ireland received of this reorganisation.
It should have come as little surprise, then, to members of the Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport that Treacy and his organisation have tried in vain to get answers from the FAI about the Delaney loan.
Sport Ireland is limited, as Treacy
told the committee, in the extent to which it can hold the FAI or other sporting organisations to account.
This did not stop some members from raising the enormous salary Delaney enjoyed as CEO, or its governance.
Some of this commentary was the inevitable grandstanding that occurs when politicians seize on a sporting controversy, but it also usefully illuminates how the FAI has been run, and how power was dispersed and wielded within the organisation.
An FAI delegation, due to be led by Delaney, appear before the committee this Wednesday, and so expect the posturing from some Oireachtas members to reach WWF levels.
TDs Noel Rock, Ruth Coppinger and Imelda Munster monopolised what outrage there was at the appearance by Treacy and officials from Sport Ireland, but channelling blasts of Liveline fury at Delaney is not likely to get the information required, and which the public deserve to know.
TD Catherine Murphy has applied consistent scrutiny to the FAI, to the point that comments she made about it being ‘secretive’ following the departure of Martin O’Neill, led to Delaney calling criticism of the association ‘extremely unfair’.
Their exchanges this week will be instructive, with Murphy a more measured and forensic examiner than most of her colleagues.
The latest John Delaney saga is now three weeks old, and while he remains a senior figure and has been vociferously defended by some, the pressure on the FAI has not relented over that time.
This does not look like a controversy that can be toughed out, as others have in the past. Advocates for change in the administration of Irish soccer say it has been desperately needed for years, and they now enjoy unprecedented support.
Attempts to ridicule the protest in the game against Georgia by some retired Irish players and Delaney loyalists, failed miserably.
The tennis ball gimmick would have appeared outrageous in practically all circumstances, but even in the chaotic history of the FAI, these are incredible times.
For almost a month now, the FAI have tried to manage this affair while keeping John Delaney within a position of influence.
This extended to the letter delivered to John Treacy and Sport Ireland only hours before they had to sit before an Oireachtas committee.
Their actions were not only insubstantial, but they were disrespectful. It kept forensic examination of this story at one remove for another few days, but a decisive reckoning now beckons.
Unless heretofore unrevealed explanations are offered for the loan on Wednesday, the pressure for change will only grow.
Do not underestimate the FAI’s capacity to withstand the most mortifying of circumstances.
But the calls for change remain loud and unarguable.