Emmet Malone talks to the former FAI general secretary, Brendan Menton, about the task facing the association following the Genesis reportand how the problems at the World Cup still play on his mind.

A month after leaving his post as general secretary of the FAI Brendan Menton insists the primary challenge facing those charged with implementing the Genesis report is to strike a balance between the professional and voluntary wings of the association.

Menton believes that while the report's findings have provided the impetus to achieve the sort of changes he found impossible to implement, the board of management, when it meets again today to resume its discussions on Genesis, must avoid alienating many of the people on whom the sport's success depends.

"Genesis has a lot of positive aspects to it," he says, "but I was disappointed it failed to recognise there was already some movement towards change within the organisation. I'd also say there's a piece missing from it - what you do with the voluntary sector. There are a lot of people involved who are concerned about that issue and I think when Milo (Corcoran) made his comments about the report taking longer to implement than some people wanted it was because he had been giving assurances to people in the wider organisation saying, 'Okay, we'll get this right'.

"That can't simply consist of saying, "Right, we've got a professional team in to run things now and the rest of you can ride into the sunset', because that just won't work. What needs to be found is a way of getting from the convoluted structures used to run the association now and a new relationship between the people who are making decisions in Merrion Square and the people who are the ones who you are going to be relying on to implement those decisions."

It is a balance, Menton admits, he failed to strike. His predecessor, Bernard O'Byrne, he says, went too far one way, failing to consult those around him and distancing those who expected to be a part of the decision-making process. "I had a different approach. The fact I wanted to move forward by consensus has been used as a criticism of me but yes, that is what I wanted to achieve."

Menton is adamant he was at heart a reformer but was frustrated in his attempts to make the necessary changes. "It's only March since the board rejected many of the same points that are contained in Genesis," he says.

Others within the board contest the extent to which this is true but a reduction in the size of the board as well as a reorganisation of Merrion Square's internal structures do appear to have been among the recommendations shot down nine months ago.

"You can argue about different aspects of it," says Menton, "but if you look at the two reports it's not exactly mind boggling to spot the similarities but what you had then was some of the people who are champions of change now insisting the board and everything else was working perfectly well. I mean, at the time I was bringing my professional staff into meetings to answer specific queries and provide assistance. I was told that I wasn't to do that, they should stay outside and only come in when specifically requested. Now they're not only going to be at the meetings, they're probably going to be directors."

On the face of it the Genesis report would appear to have provided the ammunition required for Menton to get the intended reforms through but he maintains that by then he had lost his appetite for the scrap.

"I'd simply stopped enjoying the job," he says. "When I took it first a number of people, including Tony O'Neill, who I think experienced a lot of the same frustrations, advised me against it but it was something I felt I had to do."

Relations with a number of his fellow officers had long been strained by then and he concedes that, certainly going back as far as the events at the World Cup, he had lost some of their support on "a number of issues".

"I could have stayed, though," he insists. "I had the support of Des Casey, Kevin Fahy, Milo Corcoran and, I hope, David Blood. I have a lot of friends on council and the board - as was witnessed, I think, when the suggestion that I take on the new role (overseeing special projects like the Euro 2008 bid) was put to them."

The problems at the World Cup still play on his mind. Saipan, he admits again, was a mistake. But with regards to Roy Keane he believes, and he sees Genesis as backing this, if it hadn't been the condition of the pitch on the island it would have been something else.

"Our mistake was that we viewed Saipan as a holiday for the players. Our goal was to be fully geared up in Japan, that's what I saw as really being the start of it and I think now that what happened with Roy managed to overshadow a lot of what we did achieve at this World Cup."

Claiming to have done things well after the issue of Keane's participation had been resolved and even turning a profit out of the tournament when the English failed to is, he concedes a little like asking Abraham Lincoln's wife how her night at the theatre went aside from her husband's murder. He admits the FAI's credibility took a battering over what was seen as poor "crisis management".

"When you look at Genesis, though, it uses the word 'excellent' three times about our preparations for the competition generally and where Roy is concerned I think we come off badly.

"I heard about his original decision to leave the squad by accident but I made the calls to Michael Kennedy and Liam Gaskin and a deal was brokered. At the infamous press conference in Izumo I had a deal with Mick (McCarthy) that we would keep the thing to 10 minutes and get the message out that the door was open. We did that and if you look at Mick's book he's thanking me for dragging him out because I think he was going to jump over the table and clock a particular journalist.

"And before that the actual decision to go to Seoul for the FIFA Congress . . . I checked with Mick in Izumo and he said it was over, I checked with people back in Dublin and they said it was over so I travelled."

The day of Keane's RTÉ television interview FAI officials in Dublin briefed journalists in Japan that Keane would apologise but Menton is adamant he checked again with Dublin and was again told there were no significant developments. It was another three hours before he heard differently but he backs away from any suggestion he was deliberately undermined.

For the next year or so (his contract ends in November 2003) he will continue his work on "special projects" for the association. If he seeks to stay on beyond that, one senior FAI official says, his fate will be in the hands of the new chief executive. Menton maintains he has regained a measure of control over his destiny. He'll stay in the game one way or another, he says. Everything after that, as it is within the association now, is up for grabs.