Governance of the FAI

[elatedscum]

i believe they basically said it reflected the fact that both senior managers were reporting directly to him. assume it comes with a 70k salary bump or whatever (FAI refused to comment if there was a salary increase)

[seanfhear]

I was thinking Judean People's Front v People's Front of JudeaNot forgetting ~ The Front People of Judea ! ! !

[Razors left peg]

i believe they basically said it reflected the fact that both senior managers were reporting directly to him. assume it comes with a 70k salary bump or whatever (FAI refused to comment if there was a salary increase)

Refusing to comment on whether there is a salary increase shows that they know that this is as popular as a wet fart. Its stuff like this that proves why these guys dont deserve any extra government funds and shows why that in turn hurts football in the country.

[Eirambler]

Announcing a pay rise for Canham on the same day they announced the cancellation of the emerging talent programme wouldn't have been a good look. But it seems very likely that is what has happened.

[elatedscum]

https://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/2024/1003/1473508-courell-confirmed-as-new-permanent-ceo-of-fai/

Interim CEO announced as permanent CEO

[Stuttgart88]

They air-gapped that nicely.

[Razors left peg]

These cnuts love appointing the interim, JOS would have been a shoe in for the manager gig if he had managed to do a half way competent job in the 4 games.

[cobhlad]

https://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/fai-staff-braced-for-redundancies-and-warned-theres-no-budget-for-boots-and-runners/a2075345608.html

More worrying times for FAI staff with further redundancies and cutbacks. I genuinely can’t get my head around how the organisation running a sport so popular in Ireland is consistently in such a bad place.

[Stuttgart88]

Champagne Rugby

https://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union/articles/cy0gxjl4e5eo

[Eminence Grise]

Sweeney's basic salary has grown hugely in the five years he has been in the job, from £430,000 to £742,000. While the RFU says his salary is in line with other companies of a similar size, Sweeney remains one of the highest paid administrators in UK sport.

He has spent much of his tenure firefighting - whether due to the performance of the men's senior side, his decision to hand Eddie Jones a new contract in 2020, the botched handling of tackle heights at community level, the future of the second-tier Championship, or four professional clubs going bust on his watch - but there is no doubt Sweeney has an unenviably wide brief and a huge amount of responsibility.


Dear RFU,

My name is Jawn. I used to run a football organisation in Ireland and if you think your CEO has a habit of ****ing things up proper-like, you should see what I'm capable of…

[pineapple stu]

Mark Canham has left (https://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/2025/0422/1508852-canham-departs-position-from-fai/). Not sure how bothered I am about this really. The FAI joint statement effectively says in three years he developed a pathway plan. (Yet is now the time for sections to kick back against it? The calendar switch in particular)

[Olé Olé]

Remember Richie Sadlier implying there was a bit more to come out regarding the FAI in the context of the Canham/Healy issue. The fact that Canham's departure has been announced before they have identified a successor seemingly could imply that this isn't simply a case of Canham wanting to move back to England.

[cobhlad]

Himself and Hill have taken the guts of €1 million from the FAI through salaries in the past few years and you’d wonder what we have to show for it.

Certainly strange timing as well given all the recent strategies and plans released, with Canham heavily involved

[EalingGreen]

Remember Richie Sadlier implying there was a bit more to come out regarding the FAI in the context of the Canham/Healy issue. The fact that Canham's departure has been announced before they have identified a successor seemingly could imply that this isn't simply a case of Canham wanting to move back to England.The FAI having no successor lined up suggests he wasn't sacked.

Yet the fact that he has no new job to go to, and presuming that he will only receive the minimum payout of his contract, suggests that Canham saw some reason up ahead to persuade him that it was time to "get out of Dodge".

It could be the Healy business, as you say, though a quiet NDA payout could maybe settle that one? Alternatively, the FAI's Football Pathways Plan is clearly identified as being Canham's project. If, having seen the figures, he's worried that he might not be able to get 20 viable teams for the new National League; and/or the shift to Summer football for all is proving trickier than first thought, maybe he doesn't want to be still there should it subsequently fall apart? He has to think of his Linked-In page, after all.

[Eirambler]

There won't be many going out of their way to express much disappointment that he's gone I suspect. Pretty much everything he touched seemed to go pear shaped, and his only notable achievement - if there ends up being one - could be bringing in Hallgrimsson, which possibly happened by accident more than anything, after what appeared to be a shambolic recruitment process looking in from the outside.

There's always a concern about what comes next with these things though. No guarantee that the next person in will be any better.

[Eirambler]

The FAI having no successor lined up suggests he wasn't sacked.


I think you might be overestimating the capability of the FAI here.

[CraftyToePoke]

Remember Richie Sadlier implying there was a bit more to come out regarding the FAI in the context of the Canham/Healy issue. The fact that Canham's departure has been announced before they have identified a successor seemingly could imply that this isn't simply a case of Canham wanting to move back to England.

Yeah, this is about that. Think he also said there were things he couldn't talk about but football wasn't about power point presentations, or words to that effect, and that was at Canham IMO. This is a heave against him having succeeded and I guess more will emerge now, and it will be interesting reading. He was knee deep in a well paid overhaul of structures, while WFH in England mostly, AFAIK so its not about homesickness :D

[~YTM~]

Wasn't he living in Ireland? Remember it being mentioned after he got the job that he and his family had relocated to live here.

[elatedscum]

Wasn't he living in Ireland? Remember it being mentioned after he got the job that he and his family had relocated to live here.

Malahide

[Eirambler]

This paragraph from Dan McDonnell this morning is probably the most damning of all on Canham in my view:

"Hallgrimsson’s contract is up at the end of the year after the World Cup campaign so he will now be unsure about who holds the power. His assistant John O’Shea might also be wondering what Canham’s departure means as he was viewed as the heir apparent to the Icelander. A new face could see it differently."

What kind of football mind would look at O'Shea's time with Ireland and think he's the man for the job next time around? He'd potentially have gotten it this time if the team hadn't been absolutely awful during his caretaker period in charge. Suspect that's why O'Shea has been hanging around rather than moving on and taking a manager job elsewhere, he thinks the FAI will just hand it to him if he stays there long enough. He might still be right.

[Eirambler]

https://archive.ph/eSJMM

Courell seems to be about 90% corporate bluster, the kind of lad you'd see turning up on Bloomberg or CNBC talking in nonsensical jargon.

Reading between the lines it sounds like Cathal Dervan is maybe heading out the door.

[Eminence Grise]

Dervan wouldn’t be irreplaceable. There’s a world of difference between being a sports journalist and running a comms office. Comms management isn’t swanning round with the men’s senior team arranging press conferences and soft flannel interviews about games of two 'alves and club form. I’m sure he’s good at that, and well connected. But your top comms manager doesn’t do routine media work. They run the comms team and budgets. They're focussed on managing issues, crisis avoidance and message management for audiences who don’t read the sports pages – I’m generalising with the last bit, but the civil servants who do the budget sums for ministers, and the ministers themselves and the sports quangos the government funds like to hear news of competency now and again. Colin Healy’s contract, Eileen Gleeson’s salary without a job, the hunt for Stephen Kenny’s replacement, internal strife with unions and staff issues, handling the backwater blazers with fiefdoms in local leagues – the comms on all of those were bungled, and some still are. Teneo are very good at what they do, and they’ll offer high-level comms strategy and be on hand for big issues and crises, but they won’t be cheap or as timely as having an experienced comms manager in-house 24-7. If Dervan is on the way out and I was the FAI, I'd be whispering in the corridors in the likes of Teneo and Wilson Hartnell to see if any of their senior sports comms people have itchy feet (and quite possibly masochistic tendencies).

[Eirambler]

In recent years we've also had Callum Robinson allowing himself to be drawn into a debate on COVID vaccinations in the middle of the pandemic and more recently Evan Ferguson accidentally being directed into a press conference he wasn't supposed to be part of and answering questions by himself without any FAI PR in the room.

It's stuff that you hear of and think - you'd never see that happen at the clubs these lads play at. A lot of what they see on international break must seem very different to what they're used to with their clubs.

[Razors left peg]

https://archive.ph/eSJMM

Courell seems to be about 90% corporate bluster, the kind of lad you'd see turning up on Bloomberg or CNBC talking in nonsensical jargon.

Reading between the lines it sounds like Cathal Dervan is maybe heading out the door.

Dervan will be forever tainted by the "interview" he did with Canham bull$hitting his way around the manager search last year.

I agree on Courell, when he came into the scene talking about being "airgapped" it was obvious he loved a bit of corporate jargon.

[osarusan]

Dervan has always been a spoofer, as a journalist too.

[Fixer82]

Dervan has always been a spoofer, as a journalist too.

Anyone journalist that tells fans to boo a player wearing a green jersey, even if the player was in the wrong, is a sap!

[elatedscum]

Anyone journalist that tells fans to boo a player wearing a green jersey, even if the player was in the wrong, is a sap!

Who did he say to boo?

Re the Ferguson thing, that was the last camp so presumably when he was sent to be with the 21s.

Ah the FAI…

[Eirambler]

It was Roy Keane back in the late 90s wasn't it? And then he ghost wrote McCarthy's book after Saipan.

[Exgrad]

It was Roy Keane back in the late 90s wasn't it? And then he ghost wrote McCarthy's book after Saipan.

Yes but the book was before Saipan, about getting to the World Cup. So he chose a guy to ghost it for him who had been trying to turn fans against a key player on his team a couple of years before. Genius move by McCarthy.

[tetsujin1979]

Yes but the book was before Saipan, about getting to the World Cup. So he chose a guy to ghost it for him who had been trying to turn fans against a key player on his team a couple of years before. Genius move by McCarthy.
The World Cup Diary? Came out in October 2002, was given it for my birthday
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/490669.Mick_McCarthy_s_World_Cup_Diary_2002

[Kingdom]

Dervan wouldn’t be irreplaceable. There’s a world of difference between being a sports journalist and running a comms office. Comms management isn’t swanning round with the men’s senior team arranging press conferences and soft flannel interviews about games of two 'alves and club form. I’m sure he’s good at that, and well connected. But your top comms manager doesn’t do routine media work. They run the comms team and budgets. They're focussed on managing issues, crisis avoidance and message management for audiences who don’t read the sports pages – I’m generalising with the last bit, but the civil servants who do the budget sums for ministers, and the ministers themselves and the sports quangos the government funds like to hear news of competency now and again. Colin Healy’s contract, Eileen Gleeson’s salary without a job, the hunt for Stephen Kenny’s replacement, internal strife with unions and staff issues, handling the backwater blazers with fiefdoms in local leagues – the comms on all of those were bungled, and some still are. Teneo are very good at what they do, and they’ll offer high-level comms strategy and be on hand for big issues and crises, but they won’t be cheap or as timely as having an experienced comms manager in-house 24-7. If Dervan is on the way out and I was the FAI, I'd be whispering in the corridors in the likes of Teneo and Wilson Hartnell to see if any of their senior sports comms people have itchy feet (and quite possibly masochistic tendencies).

This post is about as good, informed and relevant a post on the FAI as I've seen here in 20 years. Perfection.

[Eminence Grise]

Thank you, Kingdom. Means a lot.

[Buckett]

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/crime/major-investigation-into-fai-and-john-delaney-derailed-by-garda-exodus-from-toxic-white-collar-crime-agency/a1847719751.html