The disgraced John Delaney

What a legacy John has left 

So after just 10 years we're back to being tenants in Lansdowne

JD 

Having said that, El Governmento must be straying very close to the '' political interference in football governance'' so disliked by UEFA and FIFA by issuing these directives, or very thinly disguised directives as ''opinions''.  Maybe we'll join Russia on the naughty step and give a few years playing friendlies against them in Nizhny Novgorod and Volgograd if things get worse. 

Quite simply, it now looks like the Govt & Sport Ireland didn't go far enough with the nature of the reform. The publishing of some of the accounts as per Irish Times link posted by gufct will make things look worse again. It's very hard to avoid the conclusion that the whole thing should be ripped up and started from scratch, but the main problem with this is that the overseers, those being the Government and Sport Ireland, are only marginally more competent than the FAI, and I'm being generous there. 

Ross is only mainly doing a bit of political grandstanding, the reforms and their actual nature as to where they want the FAI to go from here remain cloudy enough. JD hid behind legal advice when asked a few tricky questions, now Ross chooses to do the same with the KOSI report. I don't see a huge difference. If he is keeping that report out of sight so the Gardai can pursue some avenues investigating criminality, that sounds grand in theory, but we know that prosecutions are unlikely in the extreme, even without seeing the report. 

Its simple enough, it then becomes a question of whether to publish report now and basically forget about anyone ever being prosecuted, or hold report and just hope someone might be. But the non-publication of the report is holding up FAI reform, so which is more important, the reform or the possible theoretical prosecution ? I'd go with the reform meself, though can obviously see why that would be unpalatable to some. 

Sport Ireland talk the talk about reform, but were happy to appoint an old mate of theirs to a key position, even one who also has links with JD from years ago, while commenting that Mooney wouldn't have been their choice because of those exact same links. Seems the only difference between the 2 is that Mooney wasn't a mate of theirs. That kind of dubious logic wouldn't exactly inspire anyone to think they are on top of their game either. 

I've no idea what's next, but that would put me in the same category as most other stakeholders. Think rather than issuing statements, it's now up to Ross & Sport Ireland to lay out a clear framework and timeline for this whole process to get underway, and pull the plug if it doesn't. There won't be any plug pulled in an election year though, so the FAI know all they are really dealing with is fairly empty rhetoric. 

F**king hell, that would be an absolute shambles if it comes to pass. The only way (and I mean the only way) that that should be allowed to happen is on a well-defined sale and leaseback scheme with the potential to purchase back the share sold, at an agreed price (say the sale price plus 2% p/a - but the option is only open for ten years), and an agreed rent in the meantime (maybe as a share of ticket revenue per game). I wouldn't hold my breath that negotiations between the FAI and IRFU would lead to anything like that. While the IRFU have to wait 40 years (not 20) before they own the whole thing outright, there still isn't a massive incentive for them to be overly generous to the FAI, and a deal like that is not going to be in their interests, and anything less is certainly not in either the medium or long term interests of the FAI. The only way it makes sense is in the short term, and that being the case, the IRFU have them over a barrel.

I mean, the IRFU must be absolutely pissing the bed with laughter. They more or less paid off their share of the stadium when it was finished and now that it is open ten years, they are about to come into a mountain of cash when a heap of their ten year tickets renew. What better way to spend those millions than buying out a distressed FAI on the cheap, especially when the FAI will still need to use the stadium and will happily pay a million quid a time. They also have something like €40m cash on hand in the bank on their last annual report. They have something like 5,000 tickets for resale next year and they raised about €70m in 2010 when they were sold first time around. That's not a typo, it does mean they were €14,000 each on average, which is about €1,400 a year for (basically) four or five games a year. There's no way they'll be short of money to "help out" if the FAI need it.

This is such a disgraceful indictment of the financial mismanagement of the FAI over the last fifteen years, from long before the final match in the old Lansdowne Road. The IRFU are going to end up owning the place outright, paying a damn sight less than the actual cost of it (thanks to the whack of government cash that went into it), and the FAI are going to be up sh*t creek without a barrel once more. To end up having to go cap in hand back to the IRFU when we were long promised that 2020 onwards would be the debt free land of milk and honey, when instead it is back to the homelessness that pre-dated the redevelopment of the Aviva, is shocking.

If that happens, this will be JD's legacy: a hugely risky and ultimately failed ticket scheme that left the FAI with an expensive stadium project that saddled the association with debt, fifteen years of underinvestment across the country as a result, promises that it would all be worth it in the end, and a final result that actually leaves us worse off than where it all started, while JD sits on the beach with his handsome payoff, on top of the rewards he reaped for the last 15 years. Not only will the FAI no longer have the benefit of the government cash that went into the redevelopment of LR, they won't even have the benefit of ongoing exchequer funding, seeing as the lads in Leinster House seem committed to keeping that from the FAI too.

It is an absolute, unmitigated disgrace, with nothing redeeming about it whatsoever.

Spot on analysis. As is SuperDave's post. An absolute shambles. 

John Delaney's legacy. Outside of everything else, the fact that this clown had the opportunity to clear the debt by letting a third party take on the ten year tickets project and failed to do was a sackable offence at the time. Anyone who supported him in that decision should hang their heads in shame and head for the door.