FAI or IFA - who's worse?
This article in the Irish Times this morning - good to see a journalist making positive comments about the lack of trouble at North South games. Didn't know about the Sunday ban in the North - surprised it's lasted this long. How does soccer survive on this Island with two incompetent organisations controlling it?
On Soccer: If the behaviour of Glentoran fans in the wake of Wednesday's hefty defeat at Tolka Park cemented impressions provided by the successful first running of the Setanta Cup that an All-Ireland league could finally be a reality, it also suggested that while supporters in the North have moved admirably on, some administrators there remain committed to life in the dark ages.
The IFA's problems are manifold but they centre on the traditional chestnuts of cash and Catholics.
The monetary difficulties came to light after an audit conducted at the behest of new chief executive Howard Wells uncovered chronic failures in the organisation's rather shambolic financial structures which left the association open to fraud and misappropriation.
Neither has actually been found so far although the British Sports Council have sent independent auditors for a follow-up investigation which is expected to provide a fuller picture of how things have been done on Windsor Avenue in recent years.
In the meantime, long-time general secretary David Bowen has been forced out although only after a pay-off of £534,050 (remarkably close to the €800,000 paid to Fran Rooney by the FAI) was agreed. Bowen, of course, did not earn nearly as much as Rooney but, after 21 years in the job, what he did have going for him was a staggering 11 years left on his recently-signed contract of employment.
Bowen's departure is widely seen as a step forward but it has also prompted a feud between his supporters and those of IFA president Jim Boyce, a popular figure at Uefa level where, his critics say, his priorities lie.
The Sunday football row is perhaps more embarrassing still, for many neutral observers expected the ban to be dropped in June at the IFA's agm. Instead, a motion proposing its abolition almost didn't get a seconder and, after it did, it was defeated by 54 votes to 28.
Under the proposal nobody would have been forced to participate in Sunday games and so players would have had an effective veto over whether matches went ahead. Linfield manager David Jeffrey said he would have nothing to do with games played on Sunday although his club, unlike the predominantly Catholic-supported Cliftonville which abstained, voted in favour of the proposal.
Glentoran striker Michael Halliday, like Jeffrey a born-again Christian, was one of a number of prominent players to oppose the idea but others have been fiercely supportive and when the Belfast Telegraph, which ran a strongly worded editorial in favour of change, carried an article on the views of supporters the author could not find one in favour of retaining the ban.
The prohibition, the only one of its kind in Europe, is against Fifa regulations and is opposed by the IFA's own community relations officer, Michael Boyd, who recently described Sunday football as "a logical extension of our football for all policy".
Boyd, in fact, runs a league for members of the North's various minority communities that is played on Sunday but a Catholic team who play a game at any level on the same day are liable to suspension while the rules are so bizarrely archaic that even senior professionals who play in England or Scotland on the Sabbath are technically excluding themselves from the international set-up. Much of this has been conveniently brushed under the carpet.
Not, however, for much longer it seems because the government's patience appears to have run out and much needed funding is now being withheld pending measures to address the IFA's governance issues and what amounts to lingering sectarianism.
Councils across the North have already had to change their policy in relation to parks and leisure facilities and sports such as rugby and horse racing, have moved with the times. The government is now determined that football does the same.
So, too, is a significant minority of people within the game with Robert Fenton of the Ballymena Provincial League, which seconded the motion at June's agm, confirming yesterday the intermediate league is set to launch a legal challenge to both this rule and the wider constitution of the organisation.
"We're confident we'll succeed in having them both thrown out in the courts," he says.
If Fenton and his colleagues do prevail it will be another important step forward.
