Crucial motion that could derail Rooney, Delaney
I'm all for change, we can't stay in the one spot forever. Hope they get their finger out
Sunday July 6th 2003
AFTER a year of seismic blows, of dramas that obsessesed the nation, the FAI's AGM in Galway next Saturday appears to be a mundane affair. There will no 24-hour news coverage and there is unlikely to be much mileage for the phone-in shows; the most that can be expected is a little local difficulty. But, after Saipan, the departures of Mick McCarthy and Brendan Menton, the retirement of Roy Keane and the rejuvenation under Brian Kerr, the FAI as an organisation has the chance to re-invent itself next weekend.
In the Radisson Hotel on Saturday, the good intentions of the Genesis report will have to be translated into tough actions. Power will have to be reluctantly given up and the vision of Genesis, of the new chief executive Fran Rooney and of Honorary Treasurer John Delaney, allowed to grow. "It will be a dark day for Irish football if this motion fails," Delaney told me in Waterford last week.
The motion is simple but crucial. Genesis recommends the creation of a ten-man board of management, replacing the cumbersome, current 22-man board. Instead of local or vested interests, the implementation group, appointed in the wake of Genesis, envisages ten people working eagerly and expertly for Irish football with the chair of various committees such as the international committee sitting on the board. Instead of the parish pump, board members will be expected to bring the wisdom of their committees to meetings and, crucially, Rooney, the new chief executive, will have a vote and a place on that board.
The pulse does not race when John Delaney sits down and explains this to you. His vision is clear and his determination to ensure that the motion - which requires a two-thirds majority - is passed, has seen him, Rooney and other modernisers travel the country, selling it at regional meetings. It is not hard to appreciate its importance and its significance, but only an accountant, as Delaney is by training, could become excited by its detail.
This determination - the arrogance as his critics would have it - has all been served, he insists, in the interests of Irish football. He makes no money out of the FAI, nor does he need to, being, like Rooney, wealthy through his own businesses.
Like Rooney, he makes much of his connections with the grassroots, recalling his time marking pitches and putting up nets in Tralee with the team he founded, Tralee Celtic.
But his path, in FAI terms, has been gilded but complicated. The son of Joe Delaney, who was forced to resign in the wake of Merriongate, the post-tournament scandal that engulfed the FAI back in 1996, he has since worked closely with some who helped depose his father. Despite being extremely close to Joe, he has not, he claims, ever harboured thoughts of vengeance, but he will concede that when the tough times come they go through them together as a family and suffer together.
After moving through the FAI from the Waterford board though the League's committee and on to the Board of Management following the death of Tony O'Neill, Delaney became a vocal opponent of Eircom Park. "We were never going to be able to deliver on it. Our core business is playing football matches, not putting on pop concerts or Disney on Ice."
Delaney had a greater appreciation of the anger in Ireland than other senior members of the FAI
Of course, the sight of the FAI in acts of self-destruction has become something of a show-stopper, but it is an aspect Delaney believes is changing. Next Saturday, he hopes it can change for good.
From the time he was appointed Honorary Treasurer in the wake of the Eircom Park fall-out and the resignation of Bernard O'Byrne, Delaney claims that he has been insistent on the need for change. "My tenure can be broken down into two parts. The first, pre-Saipan, the second, post. In reality that is pre and post-Genesis.
"Before Saipan, I was very clear about the need for change within the FAI, but the whole focus of the organisation before the tournament was towards the World Cup. There was an attitude prevailing within the FAI that we've qualified for the World Cup, let's wait until afterwards. I think it would have been impossible to change in the run-up to the tournament because the focus was on that. I made a prediction to a lot of people that after the World Cup there would be a lot of discontent. The cracks were being covered over because we'd qualified. We had pre-tournament friendlies, the players' pool, the fall-out from Eircom Park, they were the things we had to deal with."
As the man left in Dublin when Roy Keane went home, Delaney had a greater appreciation of the anger in Ireland than other senior members of the FAI whom he met up with in Japan before Ireland's first matches. "I said to Michael Hyland on the way to Japan that we needed to have a public review and Michael completely agreed with me. After a chat the other officers saw that too, but I made it very clear that I would resign if we weren't committed to it."
There have been no threats this time. "If the vote isn't passed next week, I don't think there would be a need to resign as there has been so much change already." Yet it is hard to see how Delaney or, in particular, Rooney could remain in their positions. Rooney would have little of the power he expected on his appointment.
Delaney will not be pushed aside. He has survived one attempt to relieve him of power in January when much was made of a bonus issue with Liam Gaskin, Mick McCarthy's agent. He admits it was a trying time, but friends recall a man raging with anger that he had been ambushed in such a fashion. But he has kept going and now, with Rooney's appointment, he has a fellow traveller for change. He is also quick to praise others like Milo Corcoran, who has chaired the implementation committee and helped things reach this point. All is up for grabs in Galway.
"We promised the public last November that we would change. When Genesis was announced, the whole officer board was sitting at the table. We promised the Irish public that we would implement it and we promised that we would be a better organisation. We said we would change and change radically. That is what's at stake." That change, he believes, will lead to the FAI punching its weight. "When Clare play Kilkenny in an All-Ireland Final, Clare and Kilkenny shut down, when Ireland play in a rugby match it goes up a notch, but when we play in the World Cup Finals, Christ, the country stops. We have a world-class product, I want the FAI to become a world-class organisation."
Rooney, he believes, is already heading towards that. "Fran's been fantastic. He's put a better structure in place already. He now has to be given the ability and the power so that he can have a role in defining policy and have the ability to implement it. We forget sometimes that we were appointed to foster and develop the game. Somewhere along the way we missed that. There's no question that Fran can do that. He needs to be a voting member of the board, a smaller board that operates with quicker decisions and then he needs to have the structure to implement that."
Delaney has noticed everywhere he has gone the support for change. But it is a loose concept which will be tested at the AGM. "There is strong support for this change," he says. "There is always a level of resistance because you are looking at voluntary people giving up power within the game to better the game. This is the acid test."
Dion Fanning
