Tommy Martin: History repeating as Jonathan Hill makes FAI a punchline once more

The departure of CEO Jonathan Hill concludes another farcical FAI chapter.

FAI Chief Executive Jonathan Hill (right). Picture: ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce – except for the FAI, for whom it’s farce all the way.

It was, after all, a gnomic performance in front of an Oireachtas committee hearing that greased John Delaney’s descent down the garbage chute of sports administration. Five years on, an embarrassing turn in front of the politicos did for Jonathan Hill, Delaney’s permanent successor at the benighted association.

Truly, between Delaney, various blundering RTÉ bigwigs and now Hill, the musty anterooms of Leinster House have become the killing fields for shifty, murky-with-the-detail executives. Like cattle being led into the abattoir they go, shuffling up Kildare Street to receive a bolt to the head from Alan Dillon.

Hill’s explanation for receiving €11,500 in lieu of holidays not taken – against the staff handbook and putting the FAI in breach of the terms of its bailout from government – included the presentation of an email whose entire contents were ludicrously redacted, and the claim that the payment was down to a “throwaway joke” on his part. For an organisation once likened to a constantly exploding clown car, the nod to broad comedy stylings was the last thing needed.

Hill concluded that episode by winking at cameras while slipping out of Leinster House, breaking the fourth wall like Michael Caine in Alfie. By this stage, given that his chairman, Paul Cooke, had just failed to express full confidence in him, the smirking CEO was already a dead man walking.

Sadly, a “throwaway joke” is how many people think of the FAI in general, so when the supposedly thrusting, reforming, commercially savvy CEO dragged the entire organisation into the mire on the back of a bungled gag, it was the kind of strategic synergy nobody asked for.

In fact, unfairly or not, Hill never really shook off the sense of detached unseriousness that hung over his reign from when it emerged that he would not be moving to Ireland upon taking up the job in 2020. Never mind that it may not have made a blind bit of difference to how he performed in the role and that, for all we know, he may have put more blood, sweat and tears into Irish football from his kitchen table in London than had he moved here permanently.

In his defence, Hill had a young family in England and started the job at a time when punching in at the office was the exception rather than the rule. And we were post-Delaney here – we’d surely had enough of L’État, c’est moi; a bit of cool detachment might be for the best, no?

Nor did his then-chairman, Roy Barrett, seem bothered.

“I would much prefer to have a really good Chief Executive who is very effective, productive and has a really good work ethic,” said Barrett when asked about the matter in 2022. “The outcomes from all of that are an awful lot more important than simply presenteeism and where they are located. And the world has changed.” 

But, in retrospect, it rather gave the impression that the job was merely an errand, a stint of high-profile temp work, just a gig for J. Hill, Corporate Gun for Hire. This was an organisation suffering from corporate PTSD, requiring root and branch reform, a cultural reset and a full brand enema. Perception was everything. The FAI needed leadership, the sense of a strong hand on the tiller, which any seafaring person can tell you is not something you can do via Zoom.

It is undoubtedly true that, for all the unhelpful headlines of recent months, Hill leaves the FAI in a better state than when he found it. But then the smouldering remains of a building are technically in better shape than when it was engulfed in flames.

While Hill was credited by independent chairman Tony Keohane for guiding the association through the pandemic, and leaving “a robust organisational structure, a vastly improved financial position and a blueprint for the future success of football in Ireland,” his reign was anything but transformational.

Hill’s defining challenge, reeling in a lead sponsor for the men’s national team, mouldered in his in tray until the fag end of his tenure, a time when his cache was so spent that he couldn’t even take the credit. Sky have effectively picked up the right to have their name on the men’s shirts as an add-on to their longstanding support for the women’s team, giving the impression it was the sponsorship version of a ‘twofer’.

He cannot be blamed for the on-field struggles of the Stephen Kenny era, but the current shambolic pursuit of a successor has him riding sidecar with director of football Marc Canham, knocking on the doors of any manager with a pulse and some without.

And, in broad terms, Irish football remains the deadly tribal battleground that Afghan warlords hiding out in the Hindu Kush speak about in hushed tones. Efforts to push through structural change in everything from independent board members to gender balance and the new Football Pathway plan have consistently run into rampant self-interest and territorial in-fighting, the sort of insoluble issues that would be beyond a minor deity never mind a remote-working suit.

But if transforming Irish football is the impossible job, it was Hill’s graduation to being an active obstacle to change that ultimately did for him. His parliamentary sketch involving redacted emails and throwaway jokes denied the FAI the chance to make the case to government for its ambitious €863 million facilities plan, a credibility gap that would only begin to be closed by his departure.

As countless grassroots footballers endure a winter of sodden, waterlogged grass pitches and League of Ireland clubs patch up crumbling stadiums, another departing FAI CEO feels a little bit like history repeating.