Keane has track record to sort out FAI shambles
‘THE WONDER IS THAT ROSS HAS NOT SOUGHT OUT KEANE YET’
AS THE scandal disgorges each new detail, the responses of those involved have become ever more predictable. Irish soccer, meanwhile, continues to teeter. On the Government side, Shane Ross is ready to grandstand, short on ideas but full to brimming with the kind of outrage that plays well in the weeks before an election.
The FAI are so desperate that they have no time for mea culpas or excuses; they need money urgently, to the point that before wages were paid last weekend, there were fears that staff might go without a few days before Christmas.
In the space between these two positions, a solution to the FAI’s wretched problems must be found. If the short-term answer is likely to involve the Government guaranteeing the association’s suffocating debt on Aviva Stadium, a longer-term, more systemic response to years of astonishing mismanagement should not be expected to come from Minister Ross.
Just because it is easy to criticise him should not dissuade anyone from doing so.
His involvements with sport have tended towards the clueless, from his behaviour before and after the Pat Hickey affair in Rio, to the cynical way he attached himself to the World Cup progress of the women’s hockey team.
His appearance alongside his junior minister, Brendan Griffin, at the Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport last week was mostly uninspiring.
The one exception was Ross revealing that part of the independent audit of the FAI by KOSI included the assessment that the FAI is not fit to handle public funds.
That was a revelation which moved the issue beyond the competence of Ross, his junior minister or the Department of Sport, and sent the FAI scandal tumbling into a thick new gloom.
Emotive calls for a better understanding of the complexities of
Irish soccer fade to silence when a forensic study of the body charged with governing the game in this country finds that it is unfit to receive public money.
Ross certainly won arresting headlines with that news, but when the shock subsides the need for a solution remains urgent. The minister was, predictably, rather less voluble in those circumstances.
Sarah Keane, though, provided the outline of a meaningful response in an interview on RTÉ Radio, with her suggestion of a crisis management committee. Such a committee, would, as in the example of the Olympic reforms to which Keane has been central, have power delegated to it while having distance from the FAI to begin reform.
It was a sensible proposal, which would have come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Keane’s central role in repairing the battered image of the Irish Olympic movement. The wonder is that Ross has not sought out Keane for advice and leadership on this issue before now, even if the two cases do not exactly align.
The FAI disaster has wider consequences given the numbers involved, both financially and in participation levels. But from the outset it has appeared clear that the job of reviving the Irish Olympic movement provided an example of how a sporting administration can be fixed.
The political response to Keane’s interview has been slow in coming, a factor perhaps of the Christmas lull, but also because Ross seems immovable from the demand that independent directors must be appointed before any State support is countenanced.
This, though, is where the desperation of the FAI must be considered. The interim leadership appear to understand the extent of their problems, and addressing those has a moral dimension.
Jobs are at risk, and thousands of players and coaches devoting their time and passion to soccer across the country should not feel abandoned. Keeping the lights on in the FAI’s Abbotstown headquarters is one priority, but finding capable long-term leadership is another.
This is where Keane should figure in the conversation again. Her role as president of the Olympic Federation of Ireland is not her job; that is as chief executive of Swim Ireland.
She took over there as swimming in Ireland was dealing with the repercussions of sexual abuse, a crisis far graver than anything wrought by financial helplessness.
Keane has proven herself as an outstanding crisis manager, first in Irish swimming and then in the Irish Olympic movement. Time in her company reveals an inspiring, extremely driven character.
At the very least, the Minister for Sport should be consulting with her at length in his efforts to help the FAI back to recovery.
Those within the association with the imagination and bravery to imagine the future should see her as a leader in waiting, too.