Many questions remain unanswered

IN THE end it became like a bushfire, spreading wildly and with no one seemingly in control of the situation anymore. Bastow Charleton were called in to douse the flames and then finally, when the dust had settled, Joe and Louis were left among the debris. It still left a very unsavoury taste in the mouth.

The National League has been left with Michael Hyland as its president, and in the fall out from Friday it is their privilege to nominate a vice president in succession to Pat Quigley at the special general meeting next Tuesday.

They will reflect, some of them ruefully, that it was the powerful block votes of their junior colleagues which decisively tipped the scales this way. The nine Leinster FA and the two Leinster Junior delegates held a meeting for 10 minutes during the night's last adjournment and agreed to deliver 11 block votes against Louis Kilcoyne and Joe Delaney (both National League nominees) and in favour of Quigley, Hyland (both junior nominees) and Des Casey.

Given the fall guys in the fall out and Kilcoyne is believed to have lost by at most 11 votes (29-18) - this was fairly important.

The president of the three junior bodies, Bernard O'Byrne, says that their block vote was not "political" and that he and his colleagues would not concern themselves with the voting patterns of the 22 National League clubs. Yet one wonders how they would really feel if a block vote of 22 had resulted in Hyland and Quigley being ousted, with Kilcoyne surviving?

So much has changed and yet so little really. And still the situation is no clearer. If Friday's vote reflected the FAI's ticket management and especially at USA 94 (and not much else was discussed), then why did the buck stop at Kilcoyne and not extend to Hyland, who was after all the FAI president for four years up to and including USA 94, and indeed the entire officer board of 1994?

Delaney, after all, is on record as stating that he was mandated to pursue this bartering policy and the Bastow Charleton report reputedly cites the officer board en bloc for "abandoning reasonable control procedures".

And so much else, so many valid questions, remain unresolved. In reneging on an original commitment to make Bastow Charleton's report public, with clear implications that individuals' rights superseded those of full accountability, we're no nearer to knowing the precise details of the FAI's ticket management policy, particularly at USA 94.

The bottom line is, did anyone make money out of FAI tickets? If they did or didn't this should be proven one way or the other and made a matter of public record. After all, it's the supporters' money we're talking about, though I don't believe for a moment we're ever going to get to the bottom of all this.

Nor are all the problems with the officer board and the FAI's modus operandi likely to go away for a while. The FAI's former financial accountant, Michael Morris, has made some pretty startling admissions and accusations regarding financial reports which were tampered with. As he has instituted legal proceedings they remain sub judice.

But if he or Joe McGrath, the former national coach, are successful in their cases for alleged constructive dismissal, who knows who that will implicate? Similarly, by implication, if the cases are settled out of court.

At least, perhaps, such a scenario should be averted in the future should be. As things stand, 40 per cent of the old officer board has changed, nothing else. We wait to see if the FAI will bring in management consultants or form a body under the respected Brendan Menton to oversee the modernisation of the association's archaic structures. Or if they appoint a full time chief executive for a National League which is crying out for visionary leadership from Merrion Square.

Then some good may ultimately come out of the bushfire, which left so much hurt and anguish in its wake. Your heart, if you had a heart, went out to Joe Delaney and his family on Friday night to an ashen faced Michael Hyland, no longer the tower of strength we've all come to know though hopefully will be again soon, and also to Louis Kilcoyne, Theresa and his daughter Jane.

Kilcoyne, it should be stated, carried himself with immense dignity and, as is his wont, good humour until the bitter end, despite a lump in his throat. Back at the Montrose hotel he led the singsong until breakfast. I hope this saga doesn't break him.

Alas he probably did have to go. Louis could have survived if he had made himself and the FAI accountable somewhere along the line - by calling in external auditors the day after the Sunday Independent's first revelations, or the day after Joe's belated mea culpa, or just atoning for that filibuster of a press conference last week. But that wasn't Louis style, and on the second occasion he was in Atlanta on IOC duty. Bad timing. Bad judgment. Bad advice maybe as well.

If Kilcoyne had resigned with Casey and Quigley last Tuesday, or before Friday, he may also have survived. But Louis was always skating on thin ice. There were personalised hidden agendas all over the place. The sale of Milltown wasn't so much a skeleton in the cupboard as an elephant in the living room.

Yet, it was the Shamrock Rovers senior council delegate, Jimmy Keane, who stood up on Friday night and said that none of this had anything to do with Milltown. And he was right, or at least it shouldn't have. But some people long since couldn't see the wood from the trees. They were all burning away.