John Fallon: New FAI botch first managerial test
One blemish John Delaney’s rap-sheet won’t contain is tardiness over managerial changes.
Brian Kerr was dismissed within a week of the 2006 World Cup qualifiers concluding, his successor Steve Staunton culled similarly swiftly once Euro 2008 ambitions ended prematurely.
Delaney administered the last rites on Giovanni Trapattoni’s reign within hours of their flight landing from a defeat in Austria while his final sacking, of Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane, was actually decided upon on the eve of the final Nations League game in Denmark in 2018. All executions board-approved, apparently.
It took the current regime of the FAI all of four weeks from the last Women’s World Cup game to dispense with Vera Pauw.
In the opinion of the Dutchwoman, the verdict was pre-determined and the ‘review’ that accounted for the delay was flawed from the moment that Marc Canham was appointed to oversee the exercise.
You can understand why. Everything seen or heard while covering Ireland at the tournament in Australia pointed to an unholy truce.
Once the complaints from the manager’s spell in America resurfaced and she embraced that storm rather than suppressed it in her media dealings, it would require an unlikely successful return of results on the pitch to compensate for the turmoil away from it.
Friction with her players was more evident than her employers, yet small but significant stories emerged highlighting how Pauw was losing control not just in the dressing-room but the executive version too.
Lines of demarcation in camp between players/staff and the executives, otherwise known as the bubble, were breached. Squad members were communicating to the hierarchy and, as Pauw referred to, those players she’d talked up her bond with
Read on irishexaminer.com
