The surroundings look like they've been set up for one of those cheap, mid afternoon game shows involving teams of B list celebrities. The collection of slightly bizarre gifts from other associations, the little pile of synthetic grass samples stacked in amongst the cardboard box files, the adidas deodorant (either a commercial sample or a standby for use before particularly tough meetings, I leave still unsure).

Yes, rest assured that when one of our nation's notoriously high rolling broadcasters finally gets around to bringing us Whose office is it anyway? they'll be beating a path to Brendan Menton's door.

Five years ago Menton spent six months here, stepping in after the discovery of an irregular personal loan prompted the sudden departure of Seβn Connolly. When it came time for a permanent appointment he lost out to Bernard O'Byrne and ended up swapping jobs with the association's treasurer. Now he has returned, having emerged victorious from one of the bloodiest bouts of in-fighting in the history of the organisation.

An amiable 49-year-old economist who made his living with AIB and, for a spell, in public relations, before taking up a position he had long wanted, Menton has, since he moved back into the place, been insisting his approach to the running of Irish football would be different to that of his predecessor. An old style general secretary for the FAI rather than a chief executive is the way he likes to explain it.

In fact, on the weekday morning we meet, it looks virtually unchanged from the O'Byrne days. Still seeming, for a start, just a little too run down and chaotic to belong to a man charged with leading an organisation that has recently acquired a taste for £100 million deals. In O'Byrne's case, of course, the deal in question was Eircom Park.

Now, both the stadium and its champion are gone, replaced by Menton and a financial commitment from the Government that the former Home Farm player and administrator maintains will change the face of the game here. Such are increased levels of expectation around the association's leagues and other affiliates, that he knows it had better.

More than four months after the deal that finally sealed the fate of Eircom Park was agreed, it remains a little difficult to estimate its worth with precision. A certain amount depends on the quality and location of the projects put forward, a great deal rests on Bertie Ahern's ability to deliver Stadium Ireland and the ongoing increases in revenue that it will bring.

Whatever the final figure, though, Menton admits that it won't be enough to make up for the decades of under-funding and institutionalised discrimination suffered by what is now the nation's most popular sport.

"Traditionally, football was always perceived to be the working-class game and what developed was a fairly club-based structure in which clubs that developed their own facilities were the exception rather than the rule," he says.

"But the biggest problem from a numbers point of view was that even at under-age level we were having to provide everything for the kids whereas the GAA and IRFU had the educational system developing the game for them. That may have started to change in the '60s but we're still nowhere close to where we should be in primary schools."

Menton, in fact, played in the first Leinster Senior schools final in which St Paul's were beaten by Terenure College ("two rugby schools," he laughs, "it was amazing") and has witnessed at close hand the considerable progress made in the area since.

Still, he insists, kids and facilities designed for heavy usage such as all weather pitches are the areas at which he hopes the bulk of new funds will be targeted.

"It's vital to develop a strategy and that's what we're doing at the moment. But given that we will now be able to spend money on facilities, on coaching and on providing support to those operating at grass-roots levels. And given the natural advantages we have, the internationalism of the game and the television exposure we get, I'm confident that we're going to be in a position to compete with the GAA on equal terms for the very first time."

It's a very different picture to the one he painted last December in the Green Isle Hotel when, in what was probably his key address of the whole Eircom Park battle, he told representatives from around the country that proceeding with the stadium made almost inevitable the "unthinkable" prospect that "our young players will be togging out in converted containers, in cars or at the side of pitches in 2010".

The senior game, he concedes however, looks certain to remain under-funded with National League clubs struggling to generate the sort of money they require.

"It's important to appreciate how much progress has been made. The top clubs here probably turn over around a million pounds a year which is maybe three times what they managed even three or four years ago, the Friday night scene in Dublin which is what I'd be most familiar with is very healthy and you only had to look at how superior Bohemians were to Levadia last week to see that we're finally making progress on the European front.

"But Levadia had a multi-millionaire putting in a lot of money which we don't have anywhere on that scale. I think the change of season will help a great deal," he says confidently. "We'll be taking on the GAA far more directly but I don't see that as being a problem. Ultimately, though, it will be hard to make the next step up." He dismisses the idea that that the league's longer-term progress might be undermined by the participation of a Dublin side in a breakaway European or other foreign league, insisting that he believes UEFA will retain control over the club on the continent game and that, while it does, the FAI will maintain its firm grip on the course of the game's future here.

"You can be certain that whatever's happening at European level will not be driven by Ireland," he says, "but I tend to believe that change is a positive thing and what changes we've in Europe over recent years have generally been good for us here".

He particularly welcomes the regulations issued by FIFA and UEFA this week arising out of their long-running negotiations with the EU. "I'd love to see us get to the stage where other countries stop seeing us simply as a feeder for their game but at least in this document we have something concrete laid down in terms of the minimum age at which youngsters can move abroad, the educational support they must be provided with when they get there and the levels of compensation due to clubs back here."

His frustration with the current system is all too apparent and he insists that, if adequate progress is made with the development of Campus Ireland, the FAI will have its own academy here within three to four years.

"The elite, the top 10 per cent will probably still go because, even though there aren't supposed to be any, the financial inducements are too great for many of them to turn down. But if the next 10 per cent stayed here, perhaps even after signing for an English club, and we provided them with top level coaching and expert academic support then it had the potential to have an enormous impact on the game here."

More immediately, qualification for the next World Cup would provide an enormous boost and while he quietly shudders at the prospect of meeting England in a play-off game he expressed the belief that such is the level of progress made by Mick McCarthy over the past couple of years, that the national team could well survive the final hurdle in the event that it avoids defeat against Holland ends up second in Group Two.

"We're back into the top 25 in the world on the ranking list," he says, "which is the sort of level I feel we can certainly survive at and if you look at some of the teams we might come up against, the Swedens or Romanias, there isn't a huge amount for us to fear."

If the team does make it to Asia next summer, he adds, the association will do a lot better out of it financially than on any of the three occasions under Jack Charlton.

Six months ago, meanwhile, he was confident that matters had progressed with the IFA to the point where there would be a cross-border club competition this autumn. Now, though he says he does not quite know why, the prospect looks far remote while he cannot see, even much further down the line, "what the catalyst would be," that would prompt serious talks on a single national team.

"Anyway," he asks, "would even their best player, Neil Lennon, get into our midfield? I wouldn't have thought so." All of which, he says, is for another day. For the moment the clear priority is to get on with building the association's new future while attempting to consign recent traumas to the past.

Winning over enough support to have the stadium scrapped was, he still insists, vitally important to the future of the organisation although he concedes that the very public year of squabbling that eventually led to the decision was "damaging, very damaging," to the association as a whole.

"We're a high profile body and it was a high profile project so of course it attracted a lot of attention and I'm well aware of the role the media played in it. But there isn't anything I regret about it now and there wasn't a point during the whole affair that I seriously doubted what I was doing was correct."

Having taken a good deal of flak from supporters of the scheme during the dispute he then took some from those opposed to it afterwards when the scale of O'Byrne's pay-off (believed to be in excess of £200,000) emerged. He insists, however, that after such a protracted period of paralysis it was important, "to achieve closure and move on as quickly as possible".

He admits having felt "a human side" to the way he tried to resolve the issue but rejects charges of being soft, claiming that, "I'm a good, strong decision maker and over the past year I showed that I had some steel running through my core when I had to".

When it's then put to him that his own elevation, and the election of John Delaney to the post of association treasurer and appointment of John Byrne to a full-time role, linked to the new funding might look to outsiders like the victors carving up the spoils he seems stung. "John Delaney won out in a democratic election and John Byrne, who is a very able man, is perfectly entitled to apply for whatever new position comes up.

"We're actually healing the wounds surprisingly well and what I think you're seeing is just part of a wider process of change. Four of the six officers at the top table at last week's a.g.m. either changed position or moved on.

"Des Casey has said he will retire next year. I'm not trying to say that we haven't been served well in the past but what has to be seen is that this is a very different leadership that is coming in. We're younger, our approach is very different and I think in time that people will see that we'll make a considerable impact on the game here.