In so many ways, the job of the FAI chief executive is knotted and complicated. Soccer is the biggest sport in the world and so the spotlight on it is vast, glaring and relentless. At the same time, soccer in Ireland is small, local and frequently a basket case. To be the person with your name attached to all the thankless cat-herding involved – and to have your every move scrutinised and pored over as a result – none of it is a picnic.
But in another very specific way, the job of the FAI chief executive in 2023 is devastatingly simple. You have one job, as the kids say. You have to, at all costs, keep the association a country mile clear from anything that reminds the public of the old FAI. You cannot, whatever else you do, be in the news for anything that makes people shake their heads and pronounce Another Fine Mess.
Yet here we are. This is a small selection of headlines from the past week featuring the FAI. Being in headlines at all is a bad starting point, obviously. But it gets worse, quickly, when the following is the flavour of them.
‘FAI invited to appear before PAC over executive pay and use of millions in Covid funding’ – The Irish Times, November 23rd.
‘Almost €7m for FAI withheld until payments to chief executive addressed’ – The Irish Times, November 22nd.
‘FAI could face further questions about the pay package of CEO Jonathan Hill’ – Irish Independent, November 23rd.
‘Apology by FAI CEO Hill opens further financial questions’ – Irish Examiner, November 18th.
‘Toxic payment’ blamed for FAI financial controversy’ Irish Examiner, November, 16th.
And so on and on and ever on. It understandably got a bit lost in the feral whirl of Thursday night’s news cycle but being called in front of the Public Accounts Committee is the latest and potentially most serious development of them all. Nothing good generally happens for anyone who is being dragged in to explain themselves to the PAC. And arguably, for no organisation is that truer than it is for the FAI.
You can take that and double it when the second part of the headline references “executive pay”. The FAI’s history in this particular area is so incredibly toxic that no matter how Hill comes to explain the fact that he got an extra €20,000 in travel expenses and in lieu of holiday pay, no matter how clean his hands are on the matter, the stink of it is going to linger.
This is not his fault, at least not entirely. He is, as everyone can see, paying for the sins of the ghosts of FAI past. It is, however, his problem. One that there is no simple way out of. Indeed, the very fact that he finds himself embroiled in it is, in itself, an automatic black mark against his stewardship of the association.
It’s enough to put you in mind of a meme that was briefly famous when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister across the water. It concerned a photo of Johnson sitting on a park bench with the then BBC political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg talking to him and whatever way the camera caught the pair of them, he looked like a sheepish schoolboy being given out to by a long-suffering teacher. His hands are on his knees, he’s staring straight ahead and the whole vibe is of her chastising him for going and doing the one silly bloody thing he was told time and again not to do.
Replace Johnson with Hill and Kuenssberg with literally anybody who knows the recent history of the FAI – which is most of the country, of course – and you can write the dialogue yourself.
“What did we tell you not to do, Jonathan?”
“You told me not to be in the news for issues with my pay package.”
“And what did you go and do, Jonathan?”
“I got myself into the news for issues with my pay package.”
Can’t happen. No ifs or buts. Can. Not. Happen. Everything else the FAI is trying to do immediately wilts in the shadows as soon as its chief executive appears in front of politicians explaining away money he shouldn’t have been paid. Even if it was an honest mistake. Even if it was an accident. Even if he’s paying it back. The association has long since used up its reserves of benefit of the doubt.
Again, that’s not Hill’s necessarily fault. But when you throw onto the pile of other issues facing the FAI just now, it makes for a very untidy desk. The government is withholding almost €7m in funding. Neither senior international team currently has a manager. At last count, the men’s team – which even in down times ought to be one of the most saleable properties in Irish sport – has gone 1,212 days without a sponsor. If all that wasn’t enough, shabby internal politicking is preventing them hitting their stated aim of gender equality on the board.
The worst of it is, these are just the problems that need fixing for Hill to get the association back to a baseline level of competence and standing. It’s not as if they’re going to appoint two managers, find a sponsor, unlock the government cash, survive the PAC and suddenly all will be hunky-dory. Once they do these things, the actual gruelling, pain-staking work of fixing football in Ireland still lies ahead.
If Jonathan Hill is the man to steward the FAI through it all, he has to be above reproach and beyond suspicion. This is not the way to go about it.
