Report makes a meal of inadequacies

The Genesis report is revealed and Caroline O'Doherty assesses the FAI reaction

ALMOST an hour late and looking 10 years older than when they went into their meeting, the grim-faced general secretary and his five officers emerged to meet the microphones.

They were sweating even before the heat of the crowd and the heavy duty glare of the TV cameras got to work on them and they gratefully took to unscrewing the caps off their complimentary bottles of Ballygowan.

But there were only wine glasses to drink out of.

Water out of wine glasses a taste of what's to come for the FAI if they are to really to transform themselves into the all-new, streamlined, disciplined and athletic organisation they say they want to be.

The new FAI will have to purge the perks of indulgence in past glory, trim the flab of fanciful notions of invincibility, sacrifice aspirations of personal advancement and leave out the luxury of assuming they know it all.

It will be a tough bread and water diet supplemented by soul searching and large slices of humble pie topped by healthy sprinklings of modesty.

But if the top men were more than a little grim around the gills last night, they also showed hints of real determination that in months to come, they would arrive for their next weigh-in and not have to tell fibs about abandoning their transformation regime and glugging high-calorie wine on the sly.

"We are laying ourselves bare today," said treasurer John Delaney though thankfully only in a figurative sense. "We are telling people exactly how the organisation is and how we want to improve it. It will improve. It will have to improve. No one is here for personal prestige."

Well, if anyone did come with a vestige of prestige left, it was well and truly ripped off their carcass by consultant Alistair Gray, a no-nonsense Scotsman who, in almost jolly tones delivered the damning verdict on the FAI's World Cup preparations.

Undisciplined, ill-prepared, inexperienced, short-sighted and that was just for starters. There were precious little pickings left on the egos of the officials by the time he'd finished making a meal of their shortcomings.

There were a few side-dishes to help ease the digestion of the main course though. General secretary Brendan Menton heard his job described as "mission impossible" although "mission past-tense" would have been more appropriate given he'd already tendered his resignation and would no longer be in a position to take solace from the fact that he couldn't ever expect to succeed.

And the set-up in Japan and Korea was good, although even a pre-humbled FAI would have to acknowledge the unrivalled enthusiasm of the Japanese for getting things perfect and the unrivalled adulation of the

Koreans for football may have had something to do with that.

Even Saipan was considered quite a good choice for a spot of acclimatisation, given the chance to get accustomed to heat and humidity in a mixed American-Asian culture which introduced the team gradually to novelties like chopsticks and bowing.

But it wasn't enough to take away from the fact the FAI fouled up and were being told so in no uncertain terms. They would have needed a stiff drink to swallow it all down with but there was only water.

They better get used to it.