Keeping Hill in position could cost association dearly
I WONDER if Jonathan Hill has read ‘Champagne Football’, charting the rise and fall of John Delaney, whom he succeeded as FAI chief executive in October 2020?
If not, he should, because it would inform him that all empires built on sand collapse.
Just as Delaney felt beyond reproach through his ruinous reign, so Hill gives the impression that he is untouchable, answerable to no one. He comes across as arrogant and self-serving.
Summoned twice to Leinster House to explain himself to parliamentary committees, twice he has misled them.
On December 13, Hill stated: ‘I never pushed for it. I never asked for it,’ as he explained how a four-figure payment was made to him for unclaimed holidays.
On Thursday at the PAC, he returned to the subject, saying his comment in an email, ‘Can you negotiate the same (payment) for me please’ was ‘a throwaway line’.
Hill says ‘this was not a formal request’. Yet it was interpreted as such and when the then-FAI finance director later emailed Hill to say he was ‘trying to pay’ him ‘as per your request’, Hill replied immediately: ‘Perfect.’
Perfect. He was perfectly happy for his ‘request’ to proceed. Perfectly happy to trouser a sum he knew he was not entitled to. Not once did he say stop for his ‘throwaway remark’.
Not once did he say, ‘Did you not see my exclamation mark? Sure I was only joking.’
When the story broke in FAI Cup final week, Hill could have doused the sparks and apologised for his error of judgement at the AGM on December 10.
Instead, he brazened it out, backed by a largely spineless FAI board. Today, that spark is a bonfire licking at the doors of Abbotstown.
A distant figure, Hill is paid a basic salary of €258,000, more than Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. He would not discuss his pension on Thursday, refusing to confirm whether he receives it as a cash payment, and yet refuses to engage with hard-working FAI staff on pay rises or bonuses. How has he done as CEO? Let’s see.
He commutes to work from London, endorsed Stephen Kenny’s contract extension, shoved Vera Pauw through the trap-door, and has failed to deliver a primary sponsor after 40 months on the pay-roll. Spare us a drum roll if Revolut are unveiled this week.
It cost the FAI €462,000 to sever ties with Delaney in 2019. There are those in the FAI fearful of another hefty pay-out if Hill is shown the door.
With the FAI’s blueprint for over half a billion euro of state investment for facilities in football gathering dust in a dark corner of Leinster House, potentially, there will be a greater cost if Hill stays.