Strife of Irish fills the vacuum

Simon O'Hagan tracks the rows that have racked Irish football since Jack Charlton resigned

JACK CHARLTON'S last act as manager of the Republic of Ireland was not untypical: irritated by questions about his future during the press conference that followed the European Championship play-off against Holland at Anfield, he cut short proceedings and stormed out. That set the tone for a period of rancour in which three senior figures within the Football Association of Ireland have left their jobs and the image of the organisation has been severely tarnished.

It is all a far cry from the glorious era in which Saint Jack bestowed his blessings on the team and their fans, and the great pilgrimages to major finals - in Germany, Italy and the United States - could be made seemingly under divine protection. But in the two months since Charlton's 10-year reign came to an end, the decision-makers in Dublin - indecision- makers might be a better description - have turned on themselves. Parties with conflicting interests have vied to fill the vacuum that nature abhors.

There is a feeling in Dublin that a lot of the problems that have beset Irish football might have been avoided if some preparation had been made for life after Charlton. But so dominant a figure did he become that it was hard to imagine there would ever be a time without him. When that time came, it was perhaps inevitable that the transition would be far from smooth.

Such was Charlton's uniqueness that it was never going to be possible to replace like with like. But the process by which the FAI arrived at choosing Mick McCarthy spoke of an organisation at odds with itself.

A series of leaks meant that when interviews took place in London, candidates were less than pleased to find press and television in attendance; dates given for the announcement of the appointment came and went; and after McCarthy had finally got the job, Louis Kilcoyne, the president of the FAI, let slip that the former Millwall manager had not even been his own first choice.

Barely any less seemly has been the assistant managership. McCarthy wanted Ian Evans, who had been his No2 at Millwall, but the FAI would not appoint him. It then rejected the idea that he might do the job part-time. But last week Evans got the job - part-time.

Running parallel to this issue has been a widening split between the FAI's administrators - the full-time staff who run things, or are supposed to, day-to-day - and the five officers who are the senior members of the FAI council. Any organisation which depends for its running on the combined efforts of full-time professionals and part-time volunteers who none the less hold considerable power is in a potentially vulnerable position, and the FAI has certainly proved that.

The key players in this drama have been, on the officers' side, Kilcoyne, and on the administrators' side, Sean Connolly, who until a week ago on Friday was the FAI's chief executive. Amid reports that Kilcoyne was encroaching on areas that were more naturally Connolly's, the latter resigned.

Officially, it was a voluntary departure, but when, last week, the FAI contradicted what it had said earlier by announcing that there had been compensation paid to Connolly, events read rather differently. Asked whether he was happy to see Connolly go, Kilcoyne said: "I don't want to, say, go into that."

Departure No 2 was that of the head of coaching, Joe McGrath, who according to one FAI source was also unhappy with what he saw as interference on the part of the officers. The third man to go was Michael Morris, the FAI accountant, a development which has been linked to an alleged pounds 200,000 shortfall in the FAI's coffers that arose from ticket sales for the 1994 World Cup. The FAI denies this, and on Friday night their honorary treasurer, Joe Delaney, issued a statement saying that he had paid the FAI pounds 110,000 from his own funds because the errors had been his.

It has all been too much for Finbar Flood, a leading member of the council and one of the six men who comprised the sub-committee that oversaw McCarthy's appointment. On Thursday he resigned. "I don't want to make matters worse by saying anything," he said. "But I certainly didn't go because I was happy."

Trying to keep the show on the road is Brendon Menton, acting secretary after Connolly's departure. "I think there's a recognition that there are things we have to do better," he said last week. "There's been very rapid growth in Irish football . . . and it may be the case that the structures for running the game have not kept up." The time for nostalgia may already have arrived.