DIARMUID DOYLE

IT’S not the crime, it’s the cover-up. That old political mantra, which has been around at least since the Watergate building in Washington was burgled in 1972, proved its staying power again during the week when the FAI let a minor fuss turn into a major controversy because of a simple inability to tell the truth.

Watergate eventually led to the resignation of the Richard Nixon, and while nobody is predicting the imminent exit from the FAI of its chief executive John Delaney, his behaviour last week and during other occasions in the recent past does raise serious questions about his suitability for such a high-profile and well-remunerated job.

Delaney is paid €360,000 a year, more than every prime minister in the EU, and more than President Obama. As a general rule, executives on such enormous wages tend not to be found in pubs singing songs dedicated to IRA prisoners. They do not have their shoes and socks stolen by football fans on a night out; they do not issue drunken speeches to equally inebriated supporters; they do not turn up looking a bit under the weather on YouTube with the regularity of dogs trying to walk on treadmills.

But Delaney is different. He’s entitled to his nights out, he says. If somebody is so sly as to take his picture with one of those new-fangled smartphone gadgets that appear to have caught him by surprise a few times now, well that’s not his fault.

What is undeniably his fault, however, is the handling by the FAI of the controversy over his sing song in the Bath pub in Dublin.

THE details have been well-rehearsed by now but, put simply, somebody in the FAI denied to the balls.ie website that it was Delaney singing the ballad Joe McDonnell in the video, and then compounded the lie a few days later when it got a firm of solicitors to issue denials on its behalf to The Guardian and Daily Telegraph newspapers.

No sooner had those legal threats landed than Delaney issued a statement admitting that actually it was him.

‘Yesterday, during the day, I was travelling back with my partner from abroad and trying to deal primarily with the serious cyberbullying issues facing her,’ he said. ‘I now understand that while I was travelling and uncontactable there was some confusion through a third party around the background of a video which appeared and where it happened which led to misunderstanding’.

Before continuing with the cover-up, it might be an idea to look at the crime, a word which is used metaphorically. Delaney dismissed the fuss on the basis that Joe McDonnell is just a song, one of many which are regularly rendered at Irish knees-ups. No offence meant.

One obvious problem, of course, is that Ireland play England in Lansdowne Road next June for the first time since English hooligans caused the abandonment of a game there in 1995.

It’s taken 20 years to reorganise the fixture which, until last week, looked like it might be played in an atmosphere of mutual respect (or at least tolerance) between the fans.

That may still be the case but Delaney’s decision to sing an IRA song on the night that the English FA had to intervene to stop the Neanderthal wing of its support base from singing anti-IRA songs at Wembley adds a frisson of recrimination and nastiness to the build-up to next summer’s game that is entirely unnecessary. Delaney better hope everything passes off, peacefully; if it doesn’t, he will deserve any blame that comes his way.

But it is the nonsense that followed the release of the video that really raises questions over Delaney’s personality and his suitability for such a high-profile position.

His performance in the job in recent years suggests an inability to take responsibility for mistakes that the FAI makes, which are many.

The association made a mess of ticketing arrangements for the recent game against Scotland in Glasgow.

Asked to comment, Delaney didn’t take full responsibility, as would any decent CEO. He told Ray D’Arcy on Today FM that ‘one of the guys in the FAI’ had admitted to taking his eye off the ball.

Last week, following the singsong, ‘there was confusion through a third party’, even though there could have been no such confusion two days earlier when somebody on his behalf was ringing up balls.ie and issuing them with legal threats.

Even raising his girlfriend’s cyberbullying problems looks like an attempt to muddy the waters and deflect attention from the real problem, which was, let us not forget, that on several occasions last weekend and in the early days of last week, people told lies on his behalf to newspapers and websites.

In any competently run, properly administrated company which was paying its chief executive €360,000, there would be shareholders meetings about such behaviour, but the FAI seems the very model of an incompetently run, badly administrated organisation.

Its only response was a statement from its hapless president Tony Fitzgerald which said: ‘Following recent coverage of the cyberbullying of his partner Emma and the fact that John has publicly apologised if he offended anyone for singing the nationalist song in question, we are happy to bring the matter to a close.

‘The board is more than pleased with the way John Delaney is running the association. He has done an enormous amount for Irish football. In the past year alone, the winning of the Euro 2020 bid for Dublin adds to a number of very important developments he has helped oversee during his tenure. We recently awarded him a contract extension to 2020 and he is fully deserving of that.’

The FAI, it should be pointed out here, is €50m in debt. It is on its fourth financial controller in four years. It made a mess of selling its premium tickets to the extent that seats once on sale for €32,000 can now be had for less than €5,000.

The League Of Ireland is a basket case. The Irish senior team has plummeted down the Fifa rankings and is now behind such greats of the modern game as Mali, Iceland and the Cape Verde Islands. It can’t fill the Aviva Stadium.

And while it’s true that hosting some games in Euro 2020 is an exciting prospect, Ireland won that honour largely on the basis of the Aviva, planning for which began long before John Delaney became chief executive.

By any reading, Delaney’s tenure as FAI boss has been less than stellar and he is fortunate that he benefits from a seemingly weak board of yes men who were happy to parrot nonsense about cyberbullying in their statement exonerating him for singing the song. (Not a word about the cover-up, of course).

Being able to rely on such an incurious board is the main reason few believe he will vacate his position at the FAI any time soon.

BUT there is one group who could cause trouble. Ireland’s fans are running out of patience with their chief executive and let their anger be known at the recent match against the USA. Those who showed up displayed less than complimentary banners about Delaney and the IRA, and allege they were harassed by stewards as a result. Many others, according to the You Boys In Green website, boycotted the game.

If Ireland’s most dedicated supporters start to stay away, leaving even more empty seats in the stadium than is the case currently, and depriving the FAI of much-needed revenue, then maybe somebody in the higher reaches of Irish football might decide that the time has come for a change.

There would be something nicely modern about all of that. The Government radically changed its policy on water charges recently because of vigorous opposition from the public.

How appropriate it would be if people power from disaffected fans were also to end the reign of an outrageously overpaid, entirely mediocre chief executive – the personification of all that is wrong with Irish leadership.