FAI boss paid bar tab ‘out of his own pocket’

THE FAI has said money put behind the counter for Irish supporters in a Tallinn bar on Thursday night by chief executive John Delaney was “at his own personal cost” and not taken from association funds.

This wasn’t the first time Mr Delaney had made such a gesture. He also bought beers for hundreds of Irish fans travelling on a train from Bratislava to Zilina last year but this latest spend inadvertently kicked off a minor controversy.

It was first mentioned on RTÉ radio and later a tweet from one journalist in Tallinn remarked it would be “beyond shameful” if the FAI had paid for the tab in a week when it was making a handful of employees redundant at its Abbotstown headquarters in Dublin.