Words cannot begin to describe the depths to which the FAI has sunk to with its pay-per-view deal, writes Mary Hannigan
Okay, let's just reach for the words to describe yesterday's news. How about "shameful", "reprehensible" and "depressing"? They'll do nicely, though sometimes, words aren't enough.
Especially when your national football association flogs the rights to show live coverage of your national team's home games to a foreign non-terrestrial broadcaster, owned by a chap whose newspapers oft confuse the term "Irish" with "terrorist". Easy mistake to make? Well, no, if you're blessed with half a brain.
After all, as John Delaney, honorary treasurer of the FAI, told RTÉ yesterday evening: "Football has developed into a business." Evidently, the offer of €7.5 million over four years from Sky and TV3 was just too good to refuse and, as events in Saipan didn't teach us, we can trust that the FAI will be professional enough to put that money to eminently good use.
We football fans understand it's a business, but only when it comes to acquiring the rights to show that Champions League carry-on or exclusive live and uninterrupted coverage of the domestic league. In other words club football. That's fine.
But when it comes to the business of watching our national team's home games live, we expect them to be shown by our national broadcaster, which we fund with our taxes, or by TV3 - we'll accept no substitute, especially not a foreign pay-if-you-want-to-view-us channel.
Remind us? When the FAI binned its plans for its own football arena, did it not do so upon being offered a government scheme that would see it collect a grant over three years of £45 million, with another grant of £17 million being filtered down to League of Ireland clubs for ground improvements? From whose purses did this money come? Yours and mine? Yes.
So, when the offer from Sky was accepted by the FAI, ensuring that live coverage of our national team's home games over the next four years would not be available on terrestrial television, whose interests were being served? Yours and mine? Certainly not.
What about all those tributes to the Republic of Ireland's "fantastic" supporters? Is this their reward? "The FAI certainly feel that the new deal will be welcomed by Irish soccer fans," TV3 told us yesterday, presumably with tongue firmly placed in the nearest available cheek.
"I think they are going to get opportunities to see our international matches, I think the quality of production that both Sky and TV3 can bring to the international matches is great, so what we're saying is: look, this is good news for the Irish soccer fans," Brendan Menton, the FAI's general secretary, told TV3.
And so much for the Government trying to crush our pub culture, eh? Picture it: little Johnny wants to see the boys do their thing live in the European Championship qualifiers. You give him two choices: either he comes to the pub to watch the game or he waits for TV3's "as live" coverage, by which time he'll know the result of the damn game.
He'll choose the pub, naturally. Lovely. Just where you want your eight-year-old, down the boozer, surrounded by Olé Olé- ing tulips who can barely stand and who insist on spewing lager all over Johnny's T-shirt.
But as Delaney told RTÉ yesterday: "If you look at the way the World Cup was watched in Ireland, it's become very much a social thing, people go to pubs and clubs." Except eight-year-olds, John, they watch the games in the comfort and safety of their living rooms. With their parents beside them. It's a social thing.
An FAI official was quoted a fortnight ago: "The public think we're a gobshite organisation, end of story. Can you blame them?" After yesterday? Well they've sold their supporters down the Swanee. Shame on them.