Blood rails against 'despicable' journalism

FAI president David Blood - in a letter sent to club and league officials around the country - has characterised as "despicable" some of the media coverage of the association, its senior officials and Steve Staunton last week.

Calling on those involved in the game to counter what Blood refers to as the "negative publicity" endured between the Cyprus and Czech Republic games, Blood said those involved in the game must "start exerting our views and opinions in a much more vocal fashion than before".

He goes on to state the association is "pursuing" two unnamed media outlets for what are described as "seriously erroneous" articles published last week.

This pursuit follows phone calls by the association's press officer, Gerry McDermott, until recently the football correspondent of the Irish Independent, to journalists from RTÉ and the Evening Herald to criticise stories run during the build-up to the Cyprus game.

Blood's difficulties, however, appear to centre on the aftermath of the humiliating defeat in Nicosia.

He criticises initial attempts by unnamed journalists to contact Staunton's parents as well as what he claims was a suggestion by members of the press after Staunton had objected to these attempts that he was simply seeking to divert attention from his own position.

The main other items mentioned are the Sun's characterisation of Staunton as Kermit the Frog on its front page, a claim by the Mirror that the manager had stormed away from a pitchside briefing and, yet again, the item, intended to be humorous, on RTÉ Radio's Drivetime in which reporter Fergus Sweeney suggested that as a Czech win might prompt a change of manager, which would be good for the team in the long term, Irish fans should cheer for the visitors.

This last item was repeatedly mentioned by John Delaney in interviews in the 24 hours before the game. Although the association's chief executive never mentioned by name those involved, it was widely taken at the time that his attempt to highlight the package and treat it entirely seriously was in part because it had included a contribution from Tom Humphries of The Irish Times, who had, in his column of last Monday week, called for both Delaney and Staunton to go.

Blood himself, meanwhile, received a good deal of adverse publicity last week when he decided to make a statement in support of Staunton at the team hotel. Having claimed Ireland lost in Cyprus because the team hadn't got the "bounce of the ball" in the second half, he went on to insist the criticism of Staunton was unreasonable because his side had lost only two competitive games. But this is the same number as was lost during more than three years under Brian Kerr, whose departure Blood supported.

In the letter, which circulated on Monday, Blood acknowledges that most of the coverage received by the association is entirely reasonable but nevertheless insists that much of what followed Cyprus was neither "fair" nor "balanced". Echoing the comments made by Delaney last week, he observes that some of what happened represented a "new low" for Irish journalism.

He goes on to claim that if reports of a similar nature go unchallenged, damage could be done to the association's work.

The organisation receives a considerable amount of its funding from the Government and had devoted ever more effort in recent years to improving its public image, hiring more staff to handle press relations while effectively barring other employees from communicating with journalists.