A little over two months after he emerged victorious from the battle over whether to drop Eircom Park in favour of a deal that committed the association to Stadium Ireland, Brendan Menton yesterday succeeded his long-time adversary Bernard O'Byrne when he was appointed general secretary and chief executive of the FAI.
Menton's appointment follows another long day of meetings at which a number of officials around the country initially expressed the opinion that the appointment should be externally advertised before being filled. A majority of the Board of Management voted in favour of filling the vacancy from within and once that decision had been taken, Menton, a 49-yearold economist from Dublin, who has served as treasurer of the organisation since losing out to O'Byrne for the top job five years ago, won the unanimous backing of both the Board and the National Council.
It is, in fact, the second time that Menton (right) has taken the job for he previously took it on in the wake of Sean Connolly's departure in 1996. It was after his brief spell in the job on a temporary basis that the post was advertised and O'Byrne appointed.
This time he will hold the post for an initial two-year period, something he said afterwards had been at his own suggestion. "I've given a commitment to do it that long so there is no suggestion of a vacuum being created. I believe that it will work out and that I'll still be there in 10 years but we'll sit down after two years and review the way things are going."
Menton accepted that there remains some lingering animosity towards him within the association after what was at times a bitter internal row over Eircom Park but, he said, "I hope things are moving on now. Yesterday was positive and even some of the people who argued in favour of advertising the post said to me afterwards that they had hoped I would get it in those circumstances."
Asked about his priorities when he takes up the position on the first day of next month, he said that the association must set in place structures to deal with the additional Government revenues expected as a result of the Stadium Ireland deal.
He added that there is a need to, "get the balance right between Merrion Square and the voluntary side of the game.
"I believe that the Board of Management is where the association's important decisions should be made and that the Council is where its policy should be formulated and that the most important role of the executive officers is to support those two bodies. I suppose you could say," he concluded, "that I'll be using the title general secretary a bit more than chief executive in the future."
