Trouble in the FAI

[thejollyrodger]

I'm having my doubts about Rooney, I dont know if the following is just made up by the clowns or is Rooney not doing his job.


FAI staff add to Rooney's troubles
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=94&si=1273980&issue_id=11589


FAI honorary treasurer John Delaney leaves the association's Merrion Square headquarters by the rear entrance yesterday. Picture: David Maher/Sportsfile

WHILE Fran Rooney is claiming that he is being prevented from implementing the Genesis Report, senior staff within the FAI have alleged that their chief executive is guilty of not implementing the report's findings.

At yesterday's emergency board meeting in Dublin's Alexander Hotel, senior management from Merrion Square presented each of the eight FAI directors with a hard-hitting nine-page dossier on Rooney's management of the FAI since he took over as CEO in June 2003.

It is a damning indictment of Rooney's reign and was compiled by the director of business operations Tadhg O'Halloran, director of corporate affairs Pat Costello and financial controller Peter Buckley. O'Halloran and Costello were two of the staff that have been brought into the FAI by Rooney since his arrival in Merrion Square.

The document backs up letters sent by staff to FAI president Milo Corcoran last week which formed one of the reasons for the calling of yesterday's Board meeting. The managers state in the document that some of their colleagues were fearful of putting their own concerns in writing but are prepared to make verbal submissions to the board.

The document stresses that the staff wish to see Genesis implemented but points out that the Genesis Report is quite specific in how the Association should be run and how staff are treated. It alleges that these recommendations, which were adopted by the FAI's Board of Management and National Council in 2002, have not been carried out by the chief executive. They include internal communication plus training and development.

The dossier alleges that no management meetings have been held this year and points out that the last monthly staff meeting took place in January.

They claim that there is no internal communication between the chief executive and the staff and that personnel in Merrion Square have still not been informed of the association's proposed move to Abbotstown, despite the CEO making a presentation to the National Council last month. The document also claims that there is "a lack of leadership, guidance and support" from the chief executive and questions his promise of an open door to staff.

"Not only is his style of management not open, neither is his door," say the managers.

They also allege that they find it next to impossible to get the CEO to make a decision or approve actions that they have taken.

And they highlight their fear that the FAI Eircom International Awards ceremony, which is scheduled to be televised by RTE on November 14, is not going to happen for the second consecutive year. They claim that no decision has yet been made by the chief executive to proceed with the event.

The dossier adds further weight to the anecdotal evidence, available over the past year, that the day-to-day management of the association has been in chaos. A copy of the document has been passed on to an Employment Law expert which the eight directors have engaged to assist them in their examination of Rooney's tenure and he will brief the Board when it reassembles on Tuesday.

Before any decision is made on Rooney's future, the chief executive will be given every opportunity to answer the charges that are being levelled against him, including the fallout from the joke he told at a function about the Northern Ireland football team.

The eight members of the FAI Board of Management who attended yesterday's meeting were: president Milo Corcoran, vice president David Blood, honorary secretary Michael Cody, honorary treasurer John Delaney, international committee chairman Eddie Murray, Eircom League chairman Declan Ó Luanaigh, domestic committee chairman Jim McConnell and underage committee chairman Maurice Fleming.

They met in the Alexander Hotel after successfully avoiding the camera crews that had gathered outside the CityWest and Conrad Hotels and all were remaining tight-lipped last night about their two-and-a-half hour meeting.

However, it is believed that a majority of board members believe that Rooney has serious charges to answer about his 16-month stewardship. Unless he can provide satisfactory answers when he is given his chance to address the Board then his chances of surviving this crisis are slim.

Rooney will hope that no decision is made by next Friday when the FAI's 60-strong National Council gathers in CityWest.

The CEO has several staunch allies on the Council and they are likely to propose a vote of no confidence in the Board of Management no matter what happens to Rooney.

A statement, issued through his public relations advisers, stated he was awaiting the outcome of the Board's further meetings.

"In the meantime, I will continue to give 100 per cent commitment to performing my duties as the chief executive officer of the FAI, including the implementation of the recommendations in the Genesis Report."

He added that it would be inappropriate for him to make any further comment and he now waits, along with everybody else, for the next move by his fellow FAI directors.

[Duncan Gardner]

He said that there are currently discreet discussions going on between some the bigger clubs in the Eircom and Northern Irish League into the feasability of seeting up an all Ireland league at last.The Setanta Cup would be a trial run for this new League and they were specifically concerned about crowd trouble

So discreet that word hasn't leaked out to the Linfield and Glentoran fans? I'm afraid you and your well-informed 106 interviewee may be wishfully thinking here.

Apart from security, the travel alone would impose significant costs without any likely increase in crowds. There would be resistance from the mainly unionist-supported NI clubs who would see it as a takeover. It's not going to happen, though the cup thing has potential.


Any team with NI's record are fair game for a bit of **** taking.

I don't know the bloke but keep him there

So a knack for bad jokes qualifies him to run the FAI? Are you a management consultant?

Also, can you Scousers leave Boris Johnson alone? Sure any area as self-pitying as Liverpool/ Wirral is fair game for a bit of **** taking :)

[Desyf]

I didn't say that making a joke about the NI football team qualifies him to run the FAI...I was trying to say so what if he made a joke about them. Big deal.

From what I have heard he has done some good things whilst being with the FAI, but maybe I'm hearing it from the wrong people.

As for Boris Johnson and his comments about Liverpool, I don't really care. The man is a tory gobsh#te though.

And yes, you can take the **** out of Liverpool/Wirral whenever you like.

[lopez]

The joke wasn't sectarian- its point merely that NI aren't very good. Fair enough, we've won only three of our 11 matches under Dirty Sanchez :o

Some NI fans- and gay lobbies- are exaggerating their outrage a bit.Haven't spotted any whinging about it on ourweeminds though. Speaking of whingers, I've seen that moaning bullsh*tter Lux Interior has started a thread on OWM about how he's been banned from foot.ie.. Or as he sarcastically prefers to call it, the 'Forum Of A Thousand Welcomes' - Baddooom, ching!!!! :rolleyes: What happened, Lux? Did you post a thread about how wonderful Celtic were in the EL section? :D

BTW, who's this Paul Emmick pr*ck, having the temerity to suggest that Lux may have forgotten his password? Have some sympathy whoever the f*ck you are mate: It's bad enough us fenians being right b*stards to him in not allowing him to wear a Glentoran shirt dine sythe, without his kith and kin doubting him aswell. Apparently this Paul bloke likes Ice Cream aswell! :eek: ;)

http://ourweecountry.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2372

[thejollyrodger]

god, Northern Ireland/our wee country. :rolleyes: what a pathetic joke.

[Donal81]

Lads, although we all know that the FAI are generally a shower of incompetent clowns who only seem to work towards maintaining their own power as opposed to tackling the issues that really, really matter in Irish football - building up the Eircom League, youth development, proper back-up for the national team - I wouldn't leap immediately and blindly towards Rooney's defence. I don't know the ins and outs of the entire story but the manner in which he has been presented as the only person in the place who wants to implement the Genesis Report is just too simplistic for me. Doesn't the story really revolve around the dwindling relationship between Delaney and Rooney? Rooney wanted to advertise pubicly the four executive director positions but this wasn't done, i.e. there were attempts to keep them in-house, as usual, but apparently Rooney had already done a similar thing when appointing someone else, i.e. he didn't advertise it publicly, just hired his own guy. Again, I don't know all the details and apologies if this is a bit all over the place but it just doesn't wash that he's the good guy and they're all the bad guys. A plain old power struggle?

[deadman]

it sounds like Rooney's main problem was his management style. it appears that he's not very capable of managing or working with the people around him properly ... and this has filtered into his running of the association. wouldn't be the first time for FR.

it appears he's done a reasonable job from the outside but it's the people on the inside that appear to count most with the FAI

[tricky_colour]

Haven't read all the thread but Keano thinks things are better as he
has returned and the results so far have been pretty good so I
am not sure what the problem is.

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

[Robinski]

The problem I have with all this is that Corcoran & Delaney are leaking all sorts of stuff about Rooney to the media, which makes him look bad, it's all negative. Rooney's statements are one-liners, 'I remain committed' and the likes.

I'd hate to see Rooney go, I think he's doing a great job. We all know that the reason behind all of this is that Delaney wants the job for himself. Can you imagine that muppet being in charge? Remember his statements to the media after Saipan? Remember him selling all the rights to the Ireland International matches to Sky? Remember him telling the media that we could have big screens in the city so everyone could watch them (yes in winter, fabulous idea!). Remember Rooney getting them back again for us?

The only thing Delaney is good at is backstabbing. If he gets Fran's job, we are all in serious trouble.

[harps1954]

Haven't read all the thread but Keano thinks things are better as he
has returned and the results so far have been pretty good so I
am not sure what the problem is.

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

There is more to Irish football than Roy Keane and the senior International team. Just coz Roy got his training gear and a business class seat doesn't necessarily mean that Irish Football has improved.

[Robinski]

There is more to Irish football than Roy Keane and the senior International team. Just coz Roy got his training gear and a business class seat doesn't necessarily mean that Irish Football has improved.

True, but the profile of eL has improved with more matches being televised.

[Donal81]

Genesis? How about a general exodus?
Tom Humphries
25/10/2004


LockerRoom: Occasionally in The Sopranos some poor sad-sack filled with decency and enthusiasm will join one of the poker games with the boys. He's attracted by the rivers of bourbon and the chips forming lovely alps on the table. The guy loves poker, loves good company and, well hey, these are legitimate businessmen aren't they? A few weeks later, naturally enough, the poor milquetoast will be desiccated and submerged. Debt. Fear.


Debt. Not enough coming in and more going out than he can afford. He'll be weeping every time he thinks of what will happen if he doesn't come good.

And people telling him that they told him so.

I imagine it's a little bit like that becoming a paid employee of the Football Association of Ireland. Of course (we're dealing with enthusiastic litigants here, folks), there's no suggestion of organised crime or indeed of organised anything within the FAI. Nobody gets fitted for concrete boots and nobody wins a free trip to go sleep with the fishes.

Yet in terms of a man's reputation the first morning in an FAI job involves getting sized up for a concrete blazer for that inevitable day you must walk the plank. By the first afternoon you realise the fishes won't sleep with you anyway. And people telling you they told you so.

When it comes to disorganisation and chaos, well, with the FAI you're dealing with made guys from the start. The outside world? Fuggedaboudit. Normal business practices? Fuggedaboudit. Knowing who your friends are? Fuggedaboudit.

The thing is they all seem like such decent, stand-up guys. You'd like to play poker with them. You'd like to work with them. You see them padding about in the hotel in Chiba wearing just shorts and big grins and making with the firm handshakes and happy howyas and you think yes, yes, yes, that would be the life for you. Ba-da-boom! Ba-da-bing!

You forget the detail really. You forget these were the people who hired Jack Charlton by accident having voted for Bob Paisley. These are the guys who presided over the only international game which any one can remember having had to be cancelled because of a riot. They are the geniuses who put the Combat 18 hooligans upstairs so they could get nice trajectory on their missiles. Then in a spirit of Christian forgiveness they put the chief security officer that night in charge of the whole organisation. Arise, Sir Bernard O'Byrne.

These are the guys who came up with Eircom Park and still when they are discussing the Lansdowne development will give you the faraway look and say they made a mistake scrapping their own Shangri-La, that they deserve a palace of their own. And you say but Eircom Park was going to cost twice the original estimate and the only place of their own the FAI would have would be in a special edition of Stubbs Gazette. They give you that other look - the You don't understand me anymore look.

These are the boys who handed over $474,125 worth of World Cup tickets to a chap named (reassuringly) George The Greek. They weren't complete fools of course; for security they got a third-party cheque worth $30,000 made out to somebody they didn't know.

These are the fellas who in relation to the same matter announced there had been no shortfall in takings from the 1994 World Cup, "not now, not ever", just 48 hours before Joe Delaney announced he had felt "honour bound" to pay £110,000 of his own money to make up the shortfall.

Maybe they were confused. Not long afterwards, their own chief accountant Michael Morris alleged he had been pressurised into making omissions from the lists of ticket debtors which the FAI had accrued.

Somebody is always confused. These are the people who flew their World Cup team 23 hours to Saipan, where there was no pitch, no footballs and no isotonic drinks. They are the people who announced after Mick McCarthy's appointment that he hadn't been top of their list but who, just like that, agreed a handsome bonus with him after a match in Japan. For a long time they were the guys in the first-class seats with their players shoe-horned in behind them. They have been hosts to the top 10 most chaotic press conferences you've ever been at.

These are just the landmark controversies, debacles and mishaps. We can't get into the day-to-day, run-of-the-mill foul-ups, all the days when they've all run to the front door in Merrion Square singing a chorus of "It's raining writs, halleluiah".

And yet they are all so likeable. If you were writing a sympathetic (or ironic) book about them you'd call it When Bad Things Happen To Good People. Not that you'd write a book. The eminently likeable Brendan Menton wrote a book. He filled it with such bile and bitterness it practically oozed green stuff. Instead of calling it the Merrion Square House of Horrors though, he titled it Behind The Green Door. It sounded like a sequel of To School Through The Fields or a Shakin' Stevens hack biography. Either way it was widely and wisely ignored by a weary public.

Anyway, why pay for badly-written reminiscence? For anyone interested in reading more, the FAI are more written about than The Beatles. They are a consulting phenomenon. They have been the subject of more reports about reform than Dublin hurling has.

There was the Bastow Charlton report, which pointed to "a complete review of the rules of the FAI, its council and committee structures and a review of its staff structure". That was eight years ago and it led to the Cass report, which found basic management principles and discipline to be non-existent with the FAI.

Which brought us up to the Genesis Report, over which there is much blood currently spilling on the floor, even now, nearly two and a half years after Saipan.

Ah, they are chaotic but they are magnificent. They are incorrigible. They are unreformable. They are themselves and a law unto same.

I love meeting them, love when they go sotto voce and tap your forearm with a crooked finger and direct your attention to a blazer across the room. "Off the record, between you and me, your man over there talking to your wan, he doesn't know it yet and don't tell anyone but he's for the high jump, he's about to be shafted, heh, heh, heh."

You look at the guy who's going to get whacked and you realise this is the way of things. It's a jungle out there. He knew the first time he sat down at the table. Didn't he.

I've thought for a while the only way of saving the FAI is to make it a subsidiary of the GAA or the IRFU; just let some people who know how to run sport administer soccer for a while till there is nobody left alive who remembers the charming era of the Blazer Empire.

I have received suggestions though that perhaps soccer should be handed to a smaller sports organisation like swimming or athletics because people in those businesses have more specific expertise. They know more about back-stabbing than a veteran murder detective in Limerick does.

One thing is for sure. As a nation we can't take any more "FAI in crisis" headlines. No more Prime Time specials. No more reports, recommendations or promises. No more resignations. No more press conferences. No more nights of the long knives. No more Merriongates.

The people who pay the money through taxes and tickets and replica jerseys deserve more. The players who play the game and love the game deserve more. The spirit of the game itself deserves more. Any player who slips on a green Irish jersey deserves more.

The FAI will never reform itself. Time to tear it down and build from the ground once more. No more decent skins. No more goodfellas. No more blazers.




© The Irish Times

[Superhoops]

I'd hate to see Rooney go, I think he's doing a great job......
The only thing Delaney is good at is backstabbing. If he gets Fran's job, we are all in serious trouble.
More importantly, in the short time he has been there Rooney has done more for fans, especially increasing the number of tickets available for fans (under the EL scheme) than anyone at FAI has done previously.

Delaney is an arrogant, slimey bo*l*cks who does not give a f*ck about anyone only himself (and his old man's tarnished reputation) and doesnt care who he shafts to get his own way.

As for his Waterford mate, Milo Corcoran, surely it is time for him to skulk off back to Heiniken.

Why do the FAI diehards want Peter Buckley appointed as Finance Director? He hasn't done such a great job managing the Association's finances over the years. If he had the likes of Joe Delaney and Sean Connolly would never have been allowed to access to funds to misappopriate in the first place. I suspect they are afraid a new face would uncover more cans of worms.

Despite this, I don't think Rooney will go without a fight, I think he is keeping his powder dry and intends to reveal all to the full FAI council. If the FAI Board do get rid of him later this week, I think you will see an injunction preventing them from doing so on the basis that Rooney has not been given the opportunity to respond to the 'charges' against him.

No matter what the outcome, the whole affair is a scandal.

[thejollyrodger]

Good article by Tom Humphries there, I agree with a lot of what he says. The FAI is so corrupt and Soprano like that its unlikey ever to reform.

Rooney was a honest guy and sucessful at his job before he went to Merrion square. He didn't start making bad managerial decisions overnight nor was his own personal style something that stopped him from being very successful up until he went to the FAI.

I think it is partly to do with Rooney not appoininting Peter Buckley as Finance. Scummy FAI :mad:

[pete]

I remain unconvinced by Rooney & wasn't exactly delighted with his appointment initially. He is all image & sometimes no substance behind it - just look at the amateur manner the new image/web site was launched...

Rooney is on a big salary + bonus so all he cares about is keeping his job & looks like he looking at govt to help him hang onto it...

God knows what the FAI cronies want.

:rolleyes:

[Robinski]

I remain unconvinced by Rooney & wasn't exactly delighted with his appointment initially. He is all image & sometimes no substance behind it - just look at the amateur manner the new image/web site was launched...

Rooney is on a big salary + bonus so all he cares about is keeping his job & looks like he looking at govt to help him hang onto it...

God knows what the FAI cronies want.

:rolleyes:

I disagree. He's the only one in there that doesn't need the money or the job security.

[soccerc]

just look at the amateur manner the new image/web site was launched...



The launch of the new brand was not amatuerish in any manner whatsoever. There were problems and there continue to be problems with the website and while they are solvable they are not Rooneys doing. I think I should know :o :o :o

[Robinski]

The launch of the new brand was not amatuerish in any manner whatsoever. There were problems and there continue to be problems with the website and while they are solvable they are not Rooneys doing. I think I should know :o :o :o

In fairness you can hardly blame Rooney for the FAI webmasters problems.

[Robinski]

In fairness you can hardly blame Rooney for the FAI webmasters problems.

I shouldn't blame the webmaster either, just in case he reads this and PMs me.

My point is that Fran's got bigger fish to fry, especially at the moment.

[aka Dus]

I dunno if anyone could be entitled to say Rooney is 'doing a great job' with any great confidence but it's important he remains for the simple fact of what he's NOT - i.e. a Nosferatu Blaxer type with only me fein in mind.

The turkeys are never gonna vote for Christmas so it'll take govt pressure to ensure that change happens and the natural turnover of personnel happens after the full implementation of Genesis.

[aka Dus]

The launch of the new brand was not amatuerish in any manner whatsoever. There were problems and there continue to be problems with the website and while they are solvable they are not Rooneys doing. I think I should know :o :o :o

What about all the non-umbro merchandise commissioned with the new logo which was put together at a cost of €150K ish and which is lyingin a warehouse someplace and will never see the light of day unless umbro get compensated?