Crucial vote will decide future

ATHLETICS/Special Congress: It may be a little excessive to suggest Irish athletics has reached the most critical turning point in its long and often troubled history, but depending on the outcome of tomorrow's special congress the sport will either be fast-forwarded into the modern, professional era or else be stranded without hope of any future direction.

The delegates of the Athletics Association of Ireland (AAI) that will meet in Portlaoise have already been well versed in the blueprint for the new structures and operations of the sport. Several motions will be voted on, each of which address the constitutional changes necessary for the new structures to operate, and each requiring a two-thirds majority.

It's possible the floor will elect for the motions to be voted for en bloc, but either way a certain amount of debate is inevitable. Brendan Hackett was last month ratified as the new chief executive officer of the AAI, and his position is one of the many crucial aspects of the new blueprint.

Essentially the CEO will sit on an entirely new board of the AAI, which will replace the current 16-member executive committee. The new board will comprise of a president and chairperson of new committees in finance and risk, coaching, high performance and competition. Three further committees - schools, universities and juveniles - will also operate independently for a year at least, will full board representation.

In other words, the AAI will change from being a voluntary governing body to a corporate governing body. That's exactly what the Irish Sports Council have been gearing them up to do, and earlier this year withheld half of their grant allocation of €324,000, roughly what they were looking for, until the current milestones have been passed in the restructuring of the organisation.

Back on May 1st, Gary Owens was installed as interim AAI chief executive by the Sports Council, and since then he's been central in putting together the new blueprint, working with the members of the current executive. Several sessions have been held countrywide in order the present the resulting structures to the AAI delegates, and not all the response has been good - least of all in Dublin.

Yet according to Liam Hennessy, the AAI's international secretary and a current member of the executive, the mood for the change should be overwhelming enough to see the thing through.

"Effectively we're voting ourselves out," said Hennessy. "And obviously that takes a huge leap of faith. But it's not that we're just falling behind other sports right now. We're in the quicksand, and sinking fast. But these are the challenges we just have to face up to. It's interesting that British Athletics have realised they need to do something and right now are undergoing huge changes under their CEO David Moorcroft.

"It's understandable why some volunteers would have concerns about a professional structure. But the fact is we'll need even more volunteers because there'll be more work to do. And any fears that the Irish Sports Council will suddenly be dictating to us are completely unfounded. The Sports Council have bent over backwards to help us drive this thing forward."

Hackett has already outlined his vision for the future, and it starts with developing the grassroots of the sport, but one of his first roles will be to oversee the transition from the voluntary-based association to one with professional structures.

Owens was understandably cautious about making any great predictions about the likely outcome of tomorrow's special congress; "You can never be 100 per cent confident when constitutional changes are involved," said Owens.

Provided agreement can be reached, it is hoped the new structures can start operating from January 1st, with the new committee elected on a temporary basis until formal voting at next April's annual congress.

When fully operation, the new AAI will have a budget of around €2 million a year, a large part of which will come from sponsorship. The Sports Council are also due to inject significant funding in the first year, provided everything is agreed upon tomorrow. Otherwise funding is again likely to be withheld, leaving Irish athletics even further behind where it clearly needs to be.