Stories
There is a temptation to engage in recency bias when it comes to the Football Association of Ireland and dysfunction.
The John Delaney era was calamitous for Irish football but calamity and dysfunction did not walk in the door with him nor exit with his departure. Irish football has a history of decisions that are not in the best interest of the game (moving the World Cup play-off from London to Paris when they were drawn against Spain in 1965 is one of the most renowned).
Stephen Kenny may soon be rewarded with a contract extension but another recent decision has led many within Irish football to wonder if some of the ancient failings remain.
On the very night the board of the FAI issued a holding statement on the future of Kenny, another decision was taken that has left many enraged.
Kenny might have dominated the reports the following day but one of the reasons for persisting with Kenny as manager is because he believes in long-term development, something many feel was hindered by another decision taken that evening.
How and why it happened is still hard to discern. The details concern the underage structures of Irish football, which rarely get much attention from anyone except the most committed, yet the process and the motivation is of as much concern.
The redrawing is baffling for many. What shocked people in the game was how it happened – and why.
The FAI was asked to explain what it had done but no explanation appeared for almost a week. League of Ireland academy figures were shocked after an out-of-the-blue change to the underage structure was voted in. In order to accommodate the long-running Kennedy Cup competition next June, the FAI’s board voted to delay the start of the under-14 national league campaign until next July, the season having ended on November 6.
The campaign was due to begin in March, with many clubs having already picked their squads. The under-15, under-17 and under-19 leagues are set to commence in late February or early March. Hundreds of young players, some who may even play for Ireland, had their fledgling careers pitted against old-school Irish football politics, a game they were born to lose.
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When it finally made some attempt at explaining its reasoning, the FAI was derided for what one club academy head called “a pile of dribble”. The explanation went like this when the FAI contacted the clubs.
“We want to explain the Board’s rationale in arriving at this decision which was reached following careful deliberation and will not be reversed. First, the Board is determined to transform the development pathways for all young players, girls and boys, so that players of all abilities will be able to pursue a pathway that is appropriate for them,” the FAI wrote to the League of Ireland clubs.
“Second, the Board and Executive are fully committed to our League of Ireland Academy structure which is a key feature of our draft FAI Strategy 2022-25. We will work with central Government and all external stakeholders as well as the entire Irish football community to create the best Academies that we can for those young players who will be lucky enough to become part of them.
“That will take time, energy and financial resources and not least the commitment of the FAI, Government, LOI clubs, and local Grassroots Leagues and clubs.
“Third, another reason for the decision to implement these changes now is because the Board (considers) it to be an appropriate solution to overcome the broader issue of players transitioning from Grassroots football to the Underage National League in the middle of the winter season.
“The Board and Executive are conscious that there are different views on this issue throughout the game and different perspectives depending, among other factors, on whether clubs and leagues are focused on growing participation and/or developing young players. We recognise that there are established competitions and traditions that deserve support while it is essential also that new initiatives, which support the development of the professional game, are given every opportunity and support to develop our best players.
“Accommodating these different perspectives within our distinctive sporting background will require all of us to put young players first and find collaborative solutions that will enable players of all abilities to find their level within the game and be given every opportunity to develop along a pathway that is appropriate for them.
“But we can only do this if we work together, collaboratively and positively. Our new Director of Football, when appointed, will be tasked with building that consensus having that holistic, innovative and reformist approach to the game as a whole. We will shortly discuss next steps with all key stakeholders including Underage National League clubs, the Schoolboys Football Association of Ireland, Grassroots Underage clubs and Youth and Amateur football.”
It was revealed subsequently that all board members voted for the change, which will cause even more unease among the professional game here.
Another academy figure called the FAI explanation “unreal”. The FAI, said a third, “cannot get away with this”. Likely it will, at least for now, but what are the repercussions?
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It was the former high perfomance director Ruud Dokter and the army tank of John Delaney’s FAI who forced the underage national leagues through an Irish football landscape that would rival Northern Ireland in the bitter division stakes.
League of Ireland clubs would now be given the gargantuan task of being primarily responsible for player development. It was a radical assault on how things had traditionally been done in Irish football. Great schoolboy clubs like St Kevin’s and Cherry Orchard would have to adjust. It was met with resistance.
It is said that nobody can point out a single positive Britain has derived from Brexit but a consequence nobody considered – that footballers in the Republic of Ireland under the age of 18 could no longer transfer to a UK club – could help transform Irish football, its national league long a third-world anachronism in a first-world and football-mad country.
Even so, it is understood the FAI has lobbied to have this ruling changed. What might be considered a chronic lack of ambition may also be deemed a pragmatic take on the reality that a football industry has never existed in this country.
The FAI board decision on the under-14s is borne out of schoolboy anger about League of Ireland clubs recruiting players for a calendar-year season. The Dublin & District Schoolboys League has stuck to a winter season. It is one of a number of leagues across the country playing under the umbrella of the Schoolboys Football Association of Ireland.
Many League of Ireland under-14s squads have already been finalised for 2022, with coaches and academy heads jolted by a decision that was made without prior consultation with league clubs.
The delay will allow the Kennedy Cup, a flagship competition for the SFAI, but of dramatically declining relevance, to proceed as normal as an under-14 competition in June. The SFAI did not respond to a request to participate in this piece, but The Currency has seen an angry letter it was sent recently by the DDSL, revealing a bitter breakdown in relations between the pair.
Who would have thought an underage football competition might be synonymous with political poison? Usually held over four days, this year’s Kennedy Cup competition concluded last weekend after a delay due to Covid. The final took place between Cork and South Belfast.
South Belfast were drafted in as others have started to pull out, like Kildare. As one FAI official said, “this is our player development and it involves a supposedly flagship competition with the winners not even in the jurisdiction”.
Kildare football men do not come better than Pat McNally. Men like McNally are striving for a League of Ireland senior team in the county once again but, until then, can marvel at the success Klub Kildare have made at underage League of Ireland level.
McNally is well-versed and relatively impartial when it comes to the Kennedy Cup. “I cannot for the life of me see how this decision is anything other than political,” he says.
“I have done 18 to 20 Kennedy Cups; I know more than most from both sides of the fence. I became Kildare secretary 25 years ago and in our first Kennedy Cup we were 28 out of 32 teams. In our last one we were second out of the 32.
“To put it mildly, the standard difference between the Kennedy Cup and the League of Ireland is chalk and cheese. As well as ourselves, you now have underage League of Ireland teams from Carlow, Kerry, Mayo and Cavan/Monaghan. It’s been a total success for us.”
Those ubiquitous British scouts who long targetted the Kennedy Cup to source the next Robbie Keane are now wasting their time, unless the future Robbie Keane is playing for South Belfast.
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Liam Kearney is one of the many young coaches in the League of Ireland who played as a professional in this country. He has said that League of Ireland clubs having so many volunteers coaching young players is no badge of honour. He is a voice worth listening to on Irish football.
“I can’t imagine there is any head of academy in the League of Ireland who doesn’t think this is a horrendous idea,” he said. “I have just come into the role this year and found it very positive in terms of communication in improving the academies – bringing them to the next level if possible. Then this at the end of the year was an absolute shock to be honest. It really sets us back again for what we are trying to do.
“The key thing is this is to take away any politics: it is all about player development. That’s what we are trying to do: win, lose or draw, the style of football we are trying to introduce at that age group; get them into training three times a week, give them video analysis; strength and conditioning programmes; nutritional advice – things we are trying to implement at the clubs.
“To say we are going to take that away for a four-day tournament is hard to take. When the governing body thinks this is the way forward, that’s a dark day.”
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At League of Ireland level, there exists a mixture of anger and resignation. “This seems to be dying down and nobody else is saying a thing,” said Shamrock Rovers under-14 manager Graham Gartland, his club far more active than most in challenging the FAI board on the matter.
A week after the vote, the Premier Club Alliance wrote to the FAI chairperson, Roy Barrett. It was Barrett who, in May, vowed that “openness and transparency” would be central to the post-Delaney FAI. That month’s EGM, he said, was a “watershed moment”.
The PCA letter, seen by The Currency, was striking in its tone. “The PCA simply cannot accept the decision taken by the Board of the FAI to abandon the already agreed National Leagues calendar for the 2022 season.
“The PCA is united in its opposition to the decision of the FAI Board to change the under-14 league calendar. We are at a loss to understand the reasoning behind the decision and the absence of any consultation. With this decision, we would question if those involved comprehend the impact that it will have on our game and, in particular, the children affected.
“We cannot over-emphasise the anger felt by all Premier Division clubs with this development, and we are calling for an immediate reversal of the decision. We request a meeting, to be held at FAI HQ, with yourself, Gerry McAnaney, Dick Shakespeare, Paul Cooke and Packie Bonner. We would ask that a time and date for this meeting be provided within 48 hours, to be held in the next seven days.”
The PCA heard nothing back for a week until it was confirmed the decision wouldn’t be reversed.
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The FAI is heading for another power struggle which threatens the position of the most senior figure within the association, Gerry McAnaney, the president. He is coming under increasing pressure because of a power squeeze at the top of Irish football caused by further reforms and unhappiness at what is viewed by many grassroots representatives as preferential treatment towards the professional side of the domestic game, the League of Ireland.
In order to keep public funding, the FAI has until the end of April to approve a fresh round of reforms that will further erode the traditional power bases…. The League of Ireland, which has two representatives on the board, must be cut down to one, and the same goes for the amateur side of the senior game, known as junior football. Both of these two powerful constituents of Irish football are anxious to retain their influence, which means there is likely to be a challenge to McAnaney, who comes from a military background and doesn’t have a powerful political machine behind him.
The Sunday Times, February 21
The FAI’s genial President Gerry McAnaney greeted local press last week in Sligo, where the town’s beloved Rovers were presented with a prize of €25,000, having won the SSE Airtricity/A Common Goal project for sustainability and community work. Mark Scanlon, the League of Ireland director, had been expected to join him but McAnaney alone represented the FAI.
The FAI was likely worried about who would turn up. Sligo are proud that two in every five players in Liam Buckley’s squad are a product of their academy – in a town of less than 20,000 inhabitants. Sligo’s senior team finished third in the Premier Division this year. Last week, the club broke new ground when it was accepted into the Women’s National League for the first time.
Asked did he envisage a rethink on the under-14s seasonal change, McAnaney said: “All I can say to you on that is I cannot comment on anything that was said at the board meeting,” before praising the work Conor O’Grady was doing as Sligo’s head of academy. “If matters come up at the board in time they will be discussed.”
Local journalist Jessica Farry sidestepped the hint. Without mentioning that her own brother is manager of Sligo Rovers’ under-14 side, she pointed out that “our own club had already held trials” for next season’s under-14s and that the u-turn “came too late”.
McAnaney responded: “As I said I can’t comment. What I will commit to and that everyone around our board table… We are committed as an association to have the best opportunities for every boy and every girl in this country no matter what their level of ability, to provide all those pathways.”
Farry then asked if he supported the board’s decision and McAnaney affirmed he would not comment on that.
It was McAnaney who in March denied there was any gerrymandering of the process by which members are elected to its board of management following an overhaul of its membership structure.
The FAI Council would make way for a larger body known as the General Assembly. The new structure divides the 141-person membership into three chambers, with one board member elected from the “Professional” and “Amateur” chambers, and two members elected from the “National Bodies” group, in which representatives of schoolboys’ and schoolgirls’ football are included.
“The term gerrymandering was mentioned in today’s meeting but I can assure you it was never, ever part of anything that in the working groups involved in the General Assembly, or the board, at any stage, that there would be an attempt to gerrymander anything or anyone.
“It was the intention of everyone on both working groups that everything be equitable and fair and this was also the view of best practice in Uefa and Fifa,” McAnaney said in March.
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One thing the FAI board members cannot be accused of is a fondness for leaking or saying anything at all publicly. On paper a positive thing has reached the levels of the absurd: put before a microphone, board members succumb to the tongue tie.
This was especially apparent last month, when Packie Bonner, who joined the board earlier this year, was asked rudimentary questions on the senior men’s team and Stephen Kenny. Bonner had worked under the Delaney-dominated FAI until 2010.
“I’m not going to answer that because I know where you’re getting at,” he told one of the hacks who had the temerity to wonder whether or not the Donegal man was a fan of Kenny. “You’re trying to get a line from me to say: is he going to stay in the job or not? So, I’m not going there.” And he didn’t.
Bonner “displayed the diplomatic prowess of a minister,” wrote the Irish Examiner’s John Fallon. The former goalkeeper was speaking at Buswell’s Hotel, which finds itself beside Leinster House, where the FAI might yet be hauled in again – not for interrogation but to lecture leaky ministers on the road to recovery.
The Currency contacted both Bonner and McAnaney with a view to this article. Bonner did not reply. McAnaney did, politely, advising that all queries should be sent to the FAI’s media team. Neither will reveal how he voted last week nor why.
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My background, in the interest of transparency, is very much League of Ireland and I recently stopped working for Galway United as a media officer, yet the only impression I got from talking to League of Ireland personalities this week was that they wanted what was best for the kids and everything else came after that.
“Overall, I think the FAI could be about to get its shit together. Hill has made some changes but people are waiting for a real recognition of their day-to-day work and an idea of what the future looks like.”
This, it must be said, would also be mirrored in those other areas of football which have found themselves in collision with the League of Ireland clubs. Ruud Dokter’s reforms may have been unpalatable to some but they were driven by a vision. It is hard to see the vision in this latest decision but I asked the FAI a series of questions fir the purposes of illumination.
Were the underage Irish international managers consulted on the change to 2022 under-14 league?
Response: None.
Has former FAI President Donal Conway been brought back into the Association under a new role?
Response: “No.”
Is there a timeline set for the recruitment of the Football Director, Marketing & Communications Director and Commercial Director?
Response: “The process has commenced and will be given whatever time it takes to find the right people for these key roles.”
What is the current relationship status between the FAI and SIPTU?
Response: “The FAI’s relationship with SIPTU remains respectful and engaging.”
Will CEO Jonathan Hill be moving to Ireland?
Response: None. (It’s now been over a year since he took over as CEO.)
Is there a recruitment process underway for a new Chief Operating Officer?
Response: “Yes.” (Indeed, since these questions were sent, David Courell was appointed COO. A native of Castlebar, he joins from the English FA.)
With many staff leaving over recent months, is the FAI satisfied it has handled the benchmarking process in the right manner?
Response: None.
In the Delaney days, FAI staff used to call the corridor of the Abbotstown offices that ran to the Players’ Football Association of Ireland, “the Gaza Strip”, so toxic was the relationship between it and the FAI. I brought this up recently with its chief, Stephen McGuinness, on the LOI Central podcast. I was taken aback by his response to the effect that things were only a bit better nowadays.
“There is still no platform for players to bring forward issues or improvements they would like to see in the game,” he told The Currency. “We were promised it would happen but still nothing has been done on it. And there’s virtually no player representation on the new committee structure in the FAI. Lots of talking and consultation but no action.”
Staff morale has long been an issue but one did say: “Overall, I think the FAI could be about to get its shit together. Hill has made some changes but people are waiting for a real recognition of their day-to-day work and an idea of what the future looks like.”
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At the FAI’s general assembly last Monday night, Roy Barrett was compelled to give an explanation.
“Transitioning from grassroots to the national league has caused significant difficulties, in particular for this year’s U14s,” explained Barrett.
“There was an element of dysfunctionality about what happened before. It has a collateral impact on the integrity of team structures and the game at schoolboy level.
“When the board reviewed the options, we took a view that rather than perpetuate something that was wrong and damaging for many, we’d take action now.
“We did so in the knowledge that it was late in the day and would cause some dislocation. We weren’t comfortable with it but preferred to do the right thing now rather than delay doing the right thing in a year’s time. There were no dissenting voices, we stand over the decision and it won’t be reversed.”
“Nothing has changed in the FAI,” growled Athlone Town’s rep Michael O’Connor.
League of Ireland clubs are now going to make the best of it, playing a series of friendly games between March and July so their players don’t suffer. It is, said one insider in the underage game, “a way of sticking two fingers up to the FAI without forgetting or forgiving what was done”.
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Ruud Dokter’s pathway to a better future appears to have been abandoned so it’s not surprising that coaches and staff within the FAI were unwilling to go on the record about what happened. Staggeringly, The Currency understands that the FAI not only did not consult League of Ireland clubs about the planned changes to the under-14 league: it did not even talk to its own underage international managers.
Recently, Jason Donohue brought his Ireland under-15 squad for a tournament in Spain. It featured seven players who played either for Galway United or Shamrock Rovers in November’s under-14 league final, which was streamed live and attracted over 1,200 people to Athlone. Kyle Fitzgerald’s outrageous Galway goal helped earn him a place in Donohue’s team, having now attracted the guts of 10,000 views online on social media. Next year’s Kyle Fitzgerald will play no competitive football until July.
Fitzgerald’s coach was the Catalan, Xavi Vasquez, who came to Ireland with no English and little else three years ago. “I always say the quality is here,” he told me. “We don’t have worse players than Spanish players. If you train three times a week you’ll be better than training one time per week.”
Liam Kearney was an outlier: hardly anyone involved in the League of Ireland would go on the record, notwithstanding despair at what happened.
It was consistent from club to club, coach to coach, academy head to academy head. John Delaney’s “difficult child”, as he called the League of Ireland, is riddled with insecurity and trust issues. Delaney is no longer around but fear certainly is.
