Fran Gavin responds to fierce criticism of the FAI from St Pat’s

One of the greatest weeks in the history of the League of Ireland has ended with the FAI and some clubs in dispute, but the Director of Competitions Fran Gavin insisted on Sunday that the views expressed by St Patrick’s Athletic and Derry City are not widespread.

“I don’t think it’s all the clubs,” he told SportsJOE when it was suggested that the reaction to the FAI’s €100,000 grant to League of Ireland clubs for strategic planning had revealed a deeper frustration with the association.

Derry and St Pat’s have rejected the €5,000 available to each club from the plan, with the Dublin club issuing two statements explaining their position, but Gavin says they are not reflective of any broader unrest.

“We work with all the clubs, every day. I wouldn’t believe that everyone at St Patrick’s Athletic would support what was said here, because we work with them all the time.”

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Gavin repeated that the €100,000 is the first step, but he refused to say what kind of money the FAI would make available to League of Ireland clubs in future steps.

“At the moment there are no figures around that. We’ll sit down with the twenty clubs when they have their plans and we’ll see how we can assist in those areas. How can we assist, say, Shamrock Rovers in the building of an academy. Everybody has a different goal. We’ll work with the clubs to try and secure funding and finance from every source, and that includes the FAI.”

Gavin and the FAI spent the weekend restating the association's position which is that they will give €5000 to each club to begin the process of shaping a business plan and take it from there. The money available at a later date has yet to be determined.

“You can’t put a figure on it because first of all you have to have a plan. If I’m going to look for a loan, I have to have a strategic plan. Then you sit down and say it will cost this, this and this and you can get it from here, here and here. So it’s impossible to quantify at the moment.”

Gavin says the general feeling among League of Ireland clubs has been positive.

“We will continue to work with the clubs to try and make the league a better place. St Pat’s are looking at this from St Pat’s position. That is one of the things when clubs come together to get them agree collectively, but everybody has different opinions and football is about opinions. This is two opinions from two clubs, but we’ve had a lot of clubs on to us saying they’re fully supportive of the FAI.”

St Pat’s statement on Saturday afternoon stated that “what prevails with the FAI is an approach whereby it decides everything and where it dictates policy with the occasional PR flurry to try and create a public image that its senior executives are committed to change and to improvement”.

Gavin said St Pat’s would have to explain what they meant by that, but he insisted that the plan had been agreed by a representative from the club which is why the FAI statement on Saturday described St Pat’s response as “extraordinary”.

If they were waiting for the representatives to receive approval from the clubs, the FAI would have respected that, he insisted. “There was no misunderstanding there.”

He also rejected the idea that Dundalk’s success had awoken something among followers of the League of Ireland who now had a glimpse of how things could be if the game in Ireland received the right backing.

“I don’t think there’a frustration but I think other clubs would look at the prize money and think ‘I wish we could get access to that’. But it’s a very positive thing from the league’s point of view that Dundalk are so successful and that Cork did very well. From that, we say ‘How can we work from that platform and move on?’. What we’re talking about with the €100,000 is kickstarting the process of having good business plans. That you can have ambitions and goals in those plans.”

It has been suggested that the fines handed out to League of Ireland clubs and collected by the FAI are a drain on those struggling to survive and are used to silence criticism, but Gavin said the system was not unique to Ireland.

“Every league in the world has regulations, whether that’s fines for flares, for comments being made, for people bringing the games into disrepute. That’s standard practice everywhere.

“It’s not unique to the League of Ireland. It happens in the UK - that’s the biggest league in the world, it happens in every league that I’m aware of if you make disparaging remarks. We’re trying to promote the league. That’s what we’re trying to do. There is a platform and a process if any club has any grievance to come and discuss it with the FAI.”

St Patrick’s Athletic have taken a different route, one which appears to have exposed some fault lines in Irish football.

When asked if the salary of Chief Executive John Delaney who is paid €360,000 a year had any bearing on the discontent among League of Ireland supporters, Gavin wouldn’t comment. “I’m not going to comment on that. It’s not my role to comment on anyone in the FAI and what they get.”

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