When you sit at an Ireland match at the Aviva Stadium and hear the crowd belting out anti-John Delaney songs, or listen to exasperated TDs criticising him at an Oireachtas committee hearing, or see an RTÉ poll indicating that support for his continued involvement with the FAI is down to 6 per cent, or search what people are saying about him on social media, or read the comments (when the site administrator allows them) underneath a news story about the latest goings-on at the FAI, it is quite easy to form the impression that Delaney is not very popular at all.
And yet there have been reminders over the last few weeks that Delaney is not universally unpopular, thanks to the many emails sent by members of the football family to journalists, affirming the support and gratitude that various provincial administrators and regional bodies still feel for Delaney.
Healy-Rae was playing up to an image of Delaney as the friend of the little guy – an image which might not long survive
The loyalists continue to stick up for their man despite, as secretary Gerry Gorman of the North East Football league put it, "a relentless imbalanced negative campaign [which] has been orchestrated by sections of the media".
It’s is worth looking at the sorts of things Delaney’s defenders mention in these statements because these are the reasons why he lasted 14 years as chief executive.
Cutting ribbons
The one thing about Delaney that his supporters appreciate above all else is that he seemed to take them seriously, and showed respect by coming to meet them, face to face, wherever they were in the country.
A joint statement from the four provincial associations paid tribute to Delaney for visiting “almost 2,000 grassroots clubs all over the country from Wexford to Donegal and Kerry to Louth” – and doing what one does on such visits – cutting ribbons, turning sods, raising funds, eating dinners, conducting draws, presenting awards etc.
We saw the fruits of this policy at the Oireachtas committee hearing on Wednesday when Michael Healy-Rae thanked Delaney for his support of several initiatives that Healy-Rae claimed would never have come to pass in Kerry had it not been for Delaney's support, and promised him "the mother of all welcomes" the next time he turned up in Kerry.
Ruth Coppinger spoke for many when she reacted scornfully to Healy-Rae's remarks, telling him "you're an embarrassment". But Healy-Rae will have welcomed the condemnation because when his people back home see a Dublin politician such as Coppinger getting annoyed with him, it tells them he must be doing something right.
Healy-Rae was playing up to an image of Delaney as the friend of the little guy – an image which might not long survive the Sunday Times’ reports on the expenses he incurred as CEO, which included the revelation that the FAI spent €8,018 to cover Delaney’s stay at the Ritz Carlton in New York in December 2015. That was back in the days when the Ireland women’s team were having to get changed in airport toilets.
The Irish Sun reported on Wednesday that Delaney had authority to distribute grants of up to €5,000 without having to obtain approval from the FAI board. It turns out that when it comes to winning the respect of those who run provincial clubs and leagues is to spend years touring around the country, nothing beats turning up at their events and giving them money.
Blind loyalty
Machine politicians have always understood this. Sepp Blatter, in the first year of his Fifa presidency, established the Goal programme, which dispensed financial grants from central Fifa funds to FAs around the world. Generally the smaller the FA, the more excited they were to receive the Goal funds – and they never forgot at Fifa election time who had come up with the idea.
On Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015, Morning Ireland reacted to the end of Blatter’s time as Fifa president with a discussion segment that featured the views of a prominent sports administrator.
“I think there was a blind loyalty to Blatter particularly from the Africans and Asians,” the administrator said. “Some of those countries felt that if Blatter goes they wouldn’t get the funding that they were getting; in other words that the money that they were getting was Blatter’s money, not Fifa’s money.”
This canny administrator had seen through Blatter’s game and understood that concerted action was needed to dispel the misleading impression that Blatter, personally, was the front of all Fifa largesse.
Kingpin
“The message must come loud and clear from Uefa and from South America, because Brazil and Argentina opposed Blatter as well, that that is football funding that will go to fund football projects in parts of Africa and Asia and that will continue.”
By now the suspense must be killing you so let’s reveal that the administrator expressing these views was none other than then-FAI CEO John Delaney, who went on to add that Fifa’s problems would not simply disappear with the departure of their corrupt kingpin. Thorough institutional reform was required. A failed corporate culture had to be swept away.
“Of course, we’re not finished yet because the FBI will not stop their investigation just because Blatter has retired or resigned or whatever it might be. So there’s a lot more to happen about what happened in the past and whoever takes the mantle is going to have a really big job to change the culture of Fifa.
“The key really is who becomes the next president and the cultural change that is required. You can change your leader but if that culture doesn’t change from the top, the issues that Fifa has been through will continue.”
Amen to that.
