IRISH football will rely on goals in Cardiff on Friday for an adrenaline rush but it’s the polls back home which may have a longer impact.
Sport – and in particular football – has emerged as a General Election issue, perhaps somewhat attributable to the FAI encouraging inquisitions when the doorbell rings.
It helps the incumbents seeking re-election that grants for the game have rocketed in 2024, with the FAI trumpeting the €110m state aid received for projects of various scales nationwide.
Of course, timing is everything. Four years had passed since the last allocations from the State’s two primary sporting vehicles, the Large Scale Sport Infrastructure Fund (LSSIF) and Sports Capital Programme. That the latest version is unfurled to facilitate canvassing is an age-old Irish habit.
Political cycles are simply not conducive to strategic thinking, be it in sport or other areas starved of funding. Legacy is a word trumpeted for white elephant projects when the reality is buying votes with myopic gestures and empty promises.
There’s nothing wrong with the Irish women’s team having a singular focus over the next six days.
This playoff against Wales for a place in a first-ever European Championship next summer was flagged 13 months ago once Ireland secured their table-topping status in League B of the Nations League campaign with two games to spare.
Georgia, ranked 97 places behind in the Fifa rankings, was simply a formality to overcome in last month’s semi-final to set up this winner-takes-all clash concluding at Lansdowne Road next Tuesday.
Adding the Euros to their World Cup qualification of last year would spike the profile of women’s football further in the country but won’t bolster the FAI’s bare coffers like the men’s team does.
Sixteen finalists will be lucky to gross €1m apiece from their trip to Switzerland, placing the onus firmly back on domestic associations to pay for infrastructure.
Considering how only three of every five grassroots clubs can offer access to a female-friendly toilet, the deficit is stark.
Granny-rule recruits to the Irish team have bolstered since the World Cup breakthrough, by coincidence or not, but the true legacy of an organisation is their ability to lay foundations for talent to be nurtured.
Male Academies have been to the frontier of the political discourse during this campaign and yet the need for girls to be hothoused by paid coaching staff and within proper facilities is of equal importance.
The salient question heading into Friday’s ballots is whether a change of command in Leinster House will accelerate the cash injection into vital areas for the game to prosper.
Fianna Fáil seem certain to profit from recent blunders by Fine Gael and Sinn Féin, not because they’re necessarily selling a different vision but due to them being the main party to avoid controversy.
Personalities do count and Thomas Byrne, while operating within a broader portfolio led by the Green Party’s Catherine Martin, has got to know the machinations of Irish football since being appointed in early 2020.
A failure to complement the package of stadia grants for the likes of Dalymount Park and Sligo’s Showgrounds with monies to subsidise the establishment of the academy system, he insists, was due to the lateness of the FAI’s number crunching.
To stand over payments to national league entities, via Sport Ireland, his department demanded granular, rather than broad, information on what costs are required to be met and the criteria applicable. In the scheme of urgent needs, the FAI’s Memorandum of Understanding – the blueprint underpinning core funding to pay salaries of development officers – took precedence with the election looming.
“The FAI have an ask of €8m and we’ll be happy to support that but we ran out of time,” said deputy Byrne. “Fianna Fáil wants to fund academies – we’ve said that in our manifesto.”
Saying and delivering are two different things but should Byrne retain his seat in Meath East, as expected, and keeps his brief, the vow is on the record.
History has taught us that the pace of execution slows once a new cabinet is formed and the FAI will be waiting another few years for further rounds of payouts.
Election year has coincided with a positive start to their €863m infrastructure and facility masterplan gaining traction but when the pace of handouts slows, so does the focus on private investment. It must be noted that the hold-up on the Finn Harps stadium is the club raising their portion of the costs.
“The LSSIF is 70/30 split and, organically, you’re seeing the likes of Sligo Rovers generating 30% contribution towards their development,” FAI chief executive David Courell said yesterday.
“From our plan, 20% of the investment is to come from within the game. Football is starting to come to the table. Is the association in a position to make a sizeable contribution to the pot? Not at this moment in time.
“While we have ambitions to make our contribution as readily and quickly as we can, we need to generate it first.
“That’s where, for example, the Ireland football facilities fund, which we have been working towards for the last couple of months.
“We’ve been having quite a few discussions on it with the board and committees. I would say Q1 or Q2 next year, we will start to see that coming on stream.”
Football cannot paddle its own canoe in this regard but whatever the outcome of the election can help itself by starting with an oar.
Concerns around match-fixing are usually confined to the professional game but the FAI have laid down the law by imposing an eight-month ban on a player involved in the amateur sphere.
Bookies accepting wagers on the outcomes of junior and amateur games around the country has been ongoing for years and on this occasion the governing body inspected personal accounts with betting companies to verify suspicious activity.
It’s believed this case revolved around 13 different bets, amounting to a low four-figure sum.
Fifa introduced a clause in the Standard Player Contract for professional footballers in 2013, prohibiting bets being laid on any match around the world.
No such restriction applies beneath that level. The FAI instead cite their Governance Handbook as the reference point for probing records and dishing out a hefty suspension. The player didn’t appeal the punishment beyond the first rung.
An FAI Spokesperson said: “The FAI Ireland acknowledges the recent decision of an Independent Appeal Committee to uphold the decision of an Independent Disciplinary Committee to ban a player from all football-related activity for eight months.
“The FAI operates a zero tolerance policy in this regard to uphold the integrity of the game and the decision of the committee is a pertinent reminder to all players at all levels of the game in Ireland to strictly adhere to the rules in relation to betting.
“All individuals are urged to familiarise themselves with these regulations as set out in the FAI Governance Handbook and are encouraged to reach out to the FAI for additional information if they wish.”
Any prospect of the FAI cutting their workforce has apparently come from the ground up.
When an organisation’s staff levels balloon from 199 to 251 over a four-year period, and there’s interest payments on €40m to service, it’s only natural that focus will turn to the wage bill.
Unionised staff who’d threatened to pursue their claims to the Labour Court were convinced to come inside the tent and it appears it was they who broached the notion of packages being available to quit.
“We established a staff engagement forum six months ago and within that SIPTU reps inquired of the human resource team whether there would be any voluntary redundancy on offer in the lead up to Christmas,” explained FAI chief executive David Courell.
“To which the response was no. The subsequent question was would there be any in the New Year? And the response to that was we don’t know.” Cashflow forecasts until the likely Euro 2028 windfall denote belt-tightening in Abbotstown.
Courell added: “Unfortunately in the coming years, we’ll have to balance the books. I do think we’ve a lot to work with. We won’t be able to do everything but will make sensible and logical decisions that are in the interest of the game.”