‘There is only so much an organisation can take, the FAI finally knew enough was enough’ – Shane McGrath on John Delaney’s demise
THERE is, after all, only so much an organisation can take. Even one as dysfunctional and riven by controversy as the FAI must succumb to change eventually. An era of apparently unending controversy and headlines that veered between unfavourable and embarrassing is drawing to a close. The FAI, too, know when enough is enough.
But there were times in recent days when even that, apparent to everyone else, seemed beyond those who presumed themselves the governors of soccer in Ireland.
It was little wonder that Michael Healy-Rae was so lavish in his praise of John Delaney.
The deputy’s encomium to the beleaguered former chief executive of the FAI was one of the lowlights of the futile attempt by the Oireachtas committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport to find out more about Delaney’s €100,000 loan to his own employers.
But Healy-Rae was merely admiring his own reflection, for Delaney’s capacity to cultivate support in Irish soccer by slavishly attending to the game’s most parochial needs was, for years, politics as practiced to such efficient effect by the Healy-Rae dynasty.
In one of the few contributions from Delaney to the committee, he pounced on an opportunity to detail his ceaseless devotion to the job, and the consequences this has for his family life.
That had long been a recourse for the controversial administrator. He was tangled in a number of contentious issues that would mortify most people to their marrow, but Delaney always fell back on his work in visiting clubs the length and the breadth of Ireland.
In American politics, this would be called speaking to his base (and perhaps this was the motivation for Deputy Kevin O’Keeffe’s garbled Donald Trump reference at Wednesday’s committee), and soccer at a granular level in Ireland was supportive of Delaney through much of this latest, deeply concerning affair.
But it wasn’t enough. Not even his careful cultivation of the grassroots could face down the inevitable.
Wednesday’s shameful effort by the FAI delegation at the Oireachtas hearing now looks, from the vantage point of a mere half a week, the act of reckless ego that precipitated desperately needed change.
In the days since Delaney announced – in a statement he had not provided to the committee in advance – that he was precluded on legal advice from answering questions relating to the loan or his time as chief executive, public anger engulfed the FAI.
Just as pertinently for a sporting organisation, let alone one in the financial circumstances of the FAI, major sponsors stressed the need for effective corporate governance and made clear their expectation
that any recommendations arising from the investigations commissioned by the FAI into the affair are implemented.
The Professional Footballers Association of Ireland stated their ‘dismay’ at the performance of the FAI delegation at the Oireachtas committee, and in searing criticism of the leadership of Irish soccer, borrowed a Hamlet analogy used by Ruth Coppinger to claim ‘something is rotten in the state of the FAI’.
Delaney’s new role as executive vice-president of the FAI was created on foot of a review of the executive of the association. But it emerged on Wednesday that this report may only have been commissioned after the first queries from a newspaper into the €100,000 loan.
The new role was to keep Delaney involved at the prestigious European level of the game, through UEFA.
In that regard, the admission from UEFA on Friday that it was ‘aware of the situation’ involving Delaney was notable.
Both UEFA and FIFA, the most powerful soccer associations in the world, are emerging from eras where their reputations were left in tatters by scandals. It is safe to assume the leadership of these powerful bodies would not look kindly on a senior figure attracting such unremittingly negative headlines.
The decision by Delaney not to answer questions about the loan was disastrously ill-conceived.
He may have cited legal advice and a recent Supreme Court decision arising from an Oireachtas committee hearing, but he was not prevented from answering; he could have decided it was better for Irish soccer, for the ‘football family’ to use the phrase so tirelessly employed by FAI officials to suggest a kinship between all of those invested in the game here, if he answered the questions from TDs and Senators.
Instead, FAI president Dónal Conway did most of the talking, while beside him the man that could provide information – who was chief executive at the time and so ultimately responsible for how the FAI did its business, and who provided the loan – sat in silence.
The entire performance made the FAI leadership look evasive but also hopelessly out of their depth.
And concerns about the management of the FAI eventually went beyond Delaney, to a board that seemed simply hapless. It was revealed, for instance, that a statement issued at the start of the controversy claiming the board was aware of the Delaney loan was not, in fact accurate. Only three members of the board knew about it.
One of them, incidentally, was John Delaney.
This matters because, first of all, the FAI is in receipt of substantial State funding. It was due to be €2.9 million this year, until Sport Ireland suspended future funding in a dramatic development on Tuesday.
The association has already received half of its allocation for 2019, but the remaining €1.45 million, and all future funding, is currently frozen as a consequence of the FAI’s failure to comply with the conditions of grant aid.
Sport Ireland is one of those sober bodies that does its work away from the headlines, but it is certain
to be central to an effective end to this saga.
Not only has it the power to withhold significant funds, but Dónal Conway told the Oireachtas hearing that the FAI is willing to ‘take whatever action we have to take’ to ensure future funding is not jeopardised.
That gives Sport Ireland significant leverage and, in concert with the statements made by sponsors in recent days, the momentum for change was irresistible.
But this all matters, too, because of the importance of the FAI to Irish society. It should be facilitating the playing and development of the most popular sport in the world within this country.
It should be about the children taking their first tentative steps in the game, all the way up to Mick McCarthy and his national team, once a manifestation of Irishness loved by millions.
Sporting administrators are typically, in fact stereotypically, portrayed as grey, anonymous figures who do their work away from the spotlight.
The stage was left to the sports stars, whatever the code.
That has not been the way at the FAI under the leadership of John Delaney. From nights out with supporters to cringe-making appearances on chat shows, he has been a leading player in the Irish soccer story – and he seemed to relish the profile.
For all of their faults, the leadership of Irish rugby and the GAA have remained in the background, perhaps too much so on occasion in the case of some figures in Croke Park.
In one of the rare powerful contributions by a committee member this week, chair Fergus O’Dowd urged regime change in Irish soccer.
And he cited the example of the Olympic movement in this country, which in less than three years has transformed itself after the Pat Hickey scandal at the 2016 Rio Games, into a thriving, well-run organisation.
Change is always a possibility, but in the case of the FAI, they had to be frogmarched towards it.
The farrago in Leinster House this week exposed them, and it was a pathetic sight to behold.
Irish soccer deserves better. It is crying out for better.
Change is their only choice.