Delaney gets it right

MADNESS, Albert Einstein once opined, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. One thing that the FAI have done over and over again is give their senior international managers one term too many in charge.

Even the greatest of them all, Jack Charlton, stayed one term too long. Mick McCarthy’s first tenure probably should have ended after the 2002 World Cup instead of dragging on into a fractious Euro 2004 campaign. It was the same with Giovanni Trappatoni and most recently, of course, with Martin O’Neill.

Knowing when the hold them and knowing when to fold them hasn’t exactly been the FAI’s forte and that’s the beauty of the formulation they’ve struck upon with the twin appointments of Mick McCarthy and Stephen Kenny.

There is no danger whatsoever that McCarthy will be left in the job too long. We’re not going to get a year like the one we’ve just had, with everybody just going through the motions at the fag end of a regime on its uppers.

In one fell swoop Delaney and the FAI board have broken the cycle. It’s one of the most sensible things they’ve done in a while. It doesn’t excuse them for showing such poor judgement in reappointing O’Neill for a further two years in the first place, but at least it shows that they’re learning.

Either by accident or design – and probably a little of both – Delaney has hit upon the perfect formulation to help him out of his present difficulties. Certainly it makes sense to appoint a man with experience to the short-term rescue project that waits the next Irish boss.

The Republic’s next game is a competitive game, a qualifier for the Euro 2020 Championships, which Ireland is due to co-host. Talk about going at the deep end. Better for McCarthy to take that on his head than Kenny.

In an ideal world we would have appointed Kenny at the start of this year – instead of wasting a year tilting at windmills with MoN/ Keano – but the situation we find ourselves in necessitates a different approach. Appointing Kenny Under 21 boss in the interim is a great idea too. How better to get a handle on the talent that’s coming through? How better for him to groom players to his way of playing the game?

Look obviously there are some people who see problems with the way the FAI have gone about this – Damien Duff wasn’t shy about expressing his reservations – but from our point of view it looks a win-win for everybody involved and especially for John Delaney who’ll have done a hell of a lot, simply by appointing Kenny, to mend relationships with the League of Ireland fraternity.

Love him or loathe him, you’ve got to hand it to him. The consummate politician has played his cards perfectly... yet again.