“But remember! It’s a well paid job.” – Pádraig Flynn, The Late Late Show, 1999.
The morning after the Republic of Ireland beat Gibralter 1-0 in one of the most God-awful games in the history of football, Eamon Dunphy spoke on Marian Finucane’s radio show about John Delaney’s startling move from CEO of the FAI to the hastily-created role of executive vice president.
The announcement overshadowed the game and it marked a dramatic internal shift; for a decade and a half, Delaney had run the FAI in the ‘Uno Duce, Una Voce’ style that is well recognised in Ireland,
Now, coinciding with Mark Tighe’s story in the Sunday Times, which detailed Delaney’s €100,000 euro loan made in 2017 to the FAI, came this radical reshuffling of the decks.
'I think he probably jumped the gun,' Dunphy said, meaning that by rushing to the High Court to try and prevent the story
Finucane and Dunphy are talented broadcasters and their voices are part of the background noise of Irish life to the extent that both belong to what Dunphy, in the condemnatory columns he used to write for the Sunday Independent, referred to as “Official Ireland”.
Here, they were struggling to grapple with the actual issue at hand. Just because something didn’t appear to be quite right didn’t make it wrong.
“To be honest, if you look at the big picture here, there isn’t an awful lot of corruption, of bad behaviour or chicanery that I can see,” said Dunphy.
“What I see is a man who foolishly went looking for an injunction to stop the Sunday Times publishing a story that, in itself, is pretty harmless.”
Yeah . . . I mean, like, it’s not a wrong thing to do: to lend somebody money to tide them over,” Finucane agreed.
“I think he probably jumped the gun,” Dunphy said, meaning that by rushing to the High Court to try and prevent the story, Delaney had provoked national curiosity and created an impression that there was something best kept hidden.
It certainly shone a renewed spotlight on the way the FAI operates and it means that next week’s Oireachtas hearing, at which Delaney and other FAI officials are due to appear, is being billed as a kind of show trial without any clear charge.
But Oireachtas hearings are trials with no conclusion; it’s not as if there’s a hangman waiting in the courtyard. The atmosphere is akin to watching the class trouble maker receive a particularly stern telling-off from a Home Economics teacher at the end of his or her tether.
Power base
Since Delaney has stepped down as CEO, the praise continues to roll in from the grassroots clubs in Ireland, the source of his power base. There’s a view that Delaney has done a lot for Irish soccer: that he is, as Dunphy said, “a guy with a vision.”
He turned the FAI into a profitable organisation, was instrumental in the Aviva project, helped to secure big-name managerial appointments - on big-time salaries - and had sufficient ability and persuasiveness to get himself elected to the Uefa executive, finishing second overall in the voting, ahead of former Manchester United chief executive David Gill and Poland legend Zibi Boniek.
Trips to Euro 2012 and 2016 were achieved under his watch. The argument on his behalf was that, even if he was being paid an eye-watering salary, he was worth it.
The culture in boom-time Ireland was for mind-boggling public and private sector salaries
There wasn’t much made of the Delaney’s annual salary in that discussion on RTÉ radio. Perhaps that’s understandable. In the headiest years of money and advertising, the salaries of the State broadcaster’s star turns were jaw-dropping.
In 2008, for example, Pat Kenny was reported as earning €950,000, Ryan Tubridy got a jump to €533,000 and Dunphy, as in-house football provocateur, earned €328,000. The argument made on their behalf was that if their pay was cut, then the talent would leave.
“And go where?” was a question never asked, let alone answered. To replace Conan O’Brien or Jon Stewart? Ask anyone on the street - the listeners and viewers - what they thought of those salaries and the response was automatic: crazy.
It’s probable that even some of the recipients thought it crazy. With the onset of the recession, sanity was restored and the salaries were scaled back; the talent stayed anyhow.
Both Finucane and Dunphy belonged to that select crowd of star turns; good luck to them. But it would have been awkward for either of them to critique Delaney’s salary in their recent conversation.
The culture in boom-time Ireland was for mind-boggling public and private sector salaries, reflected through ministerial pensions, golden handshakes issued to departing Civil Service chiefs and the banking executives who presided over the economic implosion of the State’s houses of finance.
This was the era and mood in which John Delaney rose as CEO of the FAI and in which he became a self-appointed and self-created star turn. And a star turn deserves a big salary. A star turn deserves to have his accommodation paid for.
Strange loan
These are the issues that will be under the microscope next week. But everyone knew about John Delaney’s salary before this furore. It’s the extra €36,000 the FAI has dedicated to his accommodation that has caused consternation.
But what happens, assuming that the strange loan to his employers can be explained away? Does everyone just shrug and move on and return to watching Mick and the boys battle away?
Or will Sport Ireland and the Minister of Sport begin to work on the process of insistently and steadily reforming the FAI until it is satisfied that it best serves the progress of football in Ireland?
Delaney was the product of an age: if he appeared to be bigger than the FAI, then that's because the FAI, at executive level, was so pathetically small
Do they simply want to know about rental receipts and bank loans or is their true intention to find out why, for instance, the League of Ireland, the premier domestic football competition, has been so poorly funded and resourced for so many years? Or why are so many League of Ireland clubs struggle to survive?
Why are so many members of the FAI board there for so long? What is the plan for the future funding and development of the underage game? Why, for instance, has Brian Kerr, one of the most successful Irish coaches, had no role within the FAI for so many years?
Why is Damien Duff, the most incandescently skilful Irish player of the last two decades, coaching in Scotland rather than inspiring kids here? What is the vision for Irish football in 10 years’ time? In 20 years’ time?
Sooner or later, John Delaney’s influence on Irish football will pass; arguably that moment has already arrived.
On a recent edition of his often terrific podcast The Stand, Dunphy spoke with Mark Tighe and Kieran Cunningham and had the grace to poke fun at himself for having been a Delaney advocate in his days on the powerful RTÉ panel.
He repeatedly referred to Delaney as ‘charismatic’. Paul Newman was charismatic. Mickey Rourke is charismatic.
What Delaney appears to have is the qualities of an old-style political grafter with formidable energy who somehow came to believe in his own mystique and who ultimately mistook a nation’s football organisation for his own.
He was a product of an age: if he appeared to be bigger than the FAI, then that’s because the FAI, at executive level, was so pathetically small. The tolerance for that kind of figure in Irish life is waning.
When Delaney moves on, the acolytes will leave with him. The game of football will remain – along with the kids who want to play it. Giving the next generation the best chance to succeed and excel in Ireland at juvenile and senior level is the first and last duty of the Football Association of Ireland.
