Putting Genesis changes to work a work in progress for FAI

IT WAS the Bible rewritten: from revelation to Genesis, rather than the other way around.

The revelation was the shock of Saipan and Roy Keane’s withering criticism of the organisation — or lack of it — surrounding the senior international team’s preparations for the 2002 World Cup. Genesis was the name of the management consultancy group whose eponymous report into the fiasco went way beyond the still fresh controversy to recommend sweeping changes in the FAI.

Five years on, most of those recommendations have been implemented but the journey from there to here has not been without its bumpy passages.

The Genesis Report was particularly critical of the Association’s structures and called for a new “culture of professionalism”.

To help achieve that, it recommended a streamlining of the management structure as well as a number of key senior professional appointments. An FAI steering committee was established to oversee the implementation of Genesis and by the time of the Association’s AGM the following year, the FAI Council was able to rubberstamp a reduction in the Board of Management from 23 members to 10. But the appointment of senior executives — an urgent target of the report — proved more problematic.

After the chaos and controversy surrounding the departure of CEO Fran Rooney in November of 2004, Sports Council funding was temporarily withheld and FAI officials were called in by then Sports Minister John O’Donoghue and given a severe dressing down. O’Donoghue reaffirmed his backing for the reforms set out in Genesis, appointed his own watchdog on the joint Irish Sports Council/FAI Liason Group overseeing the process and, as an official Department statement put it, told the Merrion Square delegation that “the continuation of organisational turbulence within the FAI was a matter of serious concern to him and the Government.”

The FAI got the message and by the time Delaney was finally installed as a permanent chief executive in March 2005, good relations with the Government had been restored. And when Mark O’ Leary was appointed Financial Director the following June, John O’Donoghue welcomed the appointment, the Irish Sports Council recognised that “significant efforts and advances” had been made and the FAI even received a thumbs-up from the authors of the report itself.

Said Genesis CEO Alistair Gray: “It is clear that the need for transformation of the FAI has been accepted and acted upon. Significantly, the culture of discipline, lacking in 2002, is now clearly evident and in place, together with a new, more professional ethos.”

But Genesis remains a work in progress.

“We’re still implementing it,” says an FAI source. “They recommended a Director Of International Performance and that position has still to be filled. We’ve advertised for it and we have a London-based sports recruiting company working on it. That person’s role will be to work with the underage managers in terms of improving the quality and quantity of the elite players coming through the system. It’s all about producing players which, hopefully, the senior manager will be able to pick from. In terms of implementing Genesis, the Director of International Performance would probably be the last piece of the jigsaw.”

And Genesis haven’t gone away, they’ve been back since to deliver a sobering indictment of the eircom League, as a result of which major and often controversial changes continue to be implemented in the running of domestic football, with more to follow. Currently, Genesis are engaged in a review of the amateur game and in the near future will turn their attention to schoolboy football.

It all began, as the rugby inquest has now begun, with a World Cup appearance which became mired in acrimony — although it’s worth remembering that the soccer players faired better than their rugby counterparts. For the FAI, it was a chance to break with the past but, after the crushing setback of Steve Staunton’s reign and the controversy surrounding the search for his successor, it’s questions about the future which concern people now.