Football Association of Ireland


The Football Association of Ireland is the governing body for association football in Ireland.
Founded in 1921, the organisation was admitted into FIFA as the Football Association of the Irish Free State in 1923. The FAI readopted their original name in 1936.

Organisation

The FAI has an executive committee of five members under the president, who receive expenses, as well as a paid administrative staff led by the general secretary Joe Murphy. There is also a General Council of delegates who vote at the AGM. As well as the senior clubs, the General Council includes delegates from a variety of affiliated organisations:
Recent changes have been made to the organisational structure following the publication of the "Genesis II" report of 2005. This includes the reorganisation of the national football league system in line with the recommendations.

Activity

The League of Ireland actually predated the FAI by three months. The FAI Cup was immediately established along the lines of the FA Cup and Scottish Cup competitions. A second cup competition was formed in 1974 called the League of Ireland Cup. The FAI Junior Cup and FAI Intermediate Cup are for non-League of Ireland teams. The Setanta Cup was inaugurated in 2005 as cross-border competition between FAI clubs from the League of Ireland and IFA clubs from the Irish League. There is also an Under 19 League of Ireland and an under-14 cup competition. The President of Ireland's Cup, a game between the previous season's League of Ireland and FAI Cup winners, was inaugurated in 2014.
The FAI also organises schools competitions, and international teams, including the senior team, underage teams, cerebral palsy teams and the Olympic team.

History

Early years

In the 19th century, association football outside of Ulster was largely confined to Dublin and a few provincial towns. The British Army teams played a role in the spread of the game to these areas, especially in Munster, as local clubs were initially reliant on them to form opposition teams, leading to the nickname "the garrison game". Association football was played in relatively few Catholic schools; middle-class schools favoured rugby union while others favoured Gaelic games. The Irish Football Association had been founded in 1880 in Belfast as the football governing body for the whole of Ireland, which was then a part of the United Kingdom and considered a Home Nation. The Leinster Football Association was an affiliate, founded in 1892 to foster the game in Leinster, outside of the Ulster heartlands. This was followed by the establishment of the Munster Football Association in 1901.

Growing Tension

By 1913, the Leinster FA had become the largest divisional association within the IFA, displacing the North East Ulster FA, yet all but two clubs in the 1913–14 Irish League were based in Ulster. While this largely reflected the balance of footballing strength within Ireland, southern members felt the IFA was doing little to promote the game outside of the professional clubs in its northern province. In the other provinces, association football was also under pressure from the Gaelic Athletic Association, which had banned members from playing or watching the sport as it was considered a "foreign" game. Furthermore, there was a growing feeling in Dublin of alleged Belfast bias when it came to hosting matches and player selection for internationals. This view was not helped by the composition of the IFA's sub-committees, with over half of the membership consisting of delegates hailing from the North-East, and the International Committee, who chose the national team, containing just one member from Leinster. The Belfast members were mainly unionist, while the Dublin members were largely nationalist. The First World War increased the gulf between the northern teams and the clubs in the south as the Irish League was suspended and replaced by regional leagues, foreshadowing the ultimate split. Tensions were then exacerbated by the Irish War of Independence of 1919–21, which disrupted contact between northern and southern clubs further and prevented resumption of the Irish League. The security situation prompted the IFA to order the March 1920-21 Irish Cup semi-final replay between Glenavon and Shelbourne to be replayed in Belfast, rather than in Dublin as convention dictated. This proved to be the final straw and the Leinster FA confirmed their decision to disaffiliate from the IFA at a meeting on the 8th June 1921.

Foundation and Split from the IFA

The Football Association of Ireland was founded in Dublin on 2 September 1921 by the Leinster FA. The Free State League had been formed in June earlier that year when the Leinster FA withdrew from the IFA. This was the climax of a series of disputes about the alleged Belfast bias of the IFA.
Both bodies initially claimed to represent the entire island. The split between Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland did not produce a split in the governing bodies of other sports, such as the Irish Rugby Football Union. The Munster Football Association, originally dominated by British Army regiments, had fallen into abeyance on the outbreak of the First World War, and was re-established in 1922 with the help of the FAI, to which it affiliated. The Falls League, based in the Falls Road of nationalist West Belfast, affiliated to the FAI, and from there Alton United won the FAI Cup in 1923. However, when the FAI applied to join FIFA in 1923, it was admitted as the FAIFS based on a 26-county jurisdiction. Attempts at reconciliation followed: at a 1923 meeting, the IFA rejected an FAIFS proposal for it to be an autonomous subsidiary of the FAIFS. A 1924 meeting in Liverpool, brokered by the English FA, almost reached agreement on a federated solution, but the IFA insisted on providing the chairman of the International team selection committee. A 1932 meeting agreed on sharing this role, but foundered when the FAIFS demanded one of the IFA's two places on the International Football Association Board. Further efforts to reach agreement were made through a series of conferences between the IFA and FAI from 1973 to 1980 during the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
The IFA did not feel obliged to refrain from selecting Free State players for its international team. The name Football Association of Ireland was readopted by the FAIFS in 1936, in anticipation of the change of the state's name in the pending Constitution of Ireland, and the FAI began to select players from Northern Ireland based on the Constitution's claim to sovereignty there. A number of players played for both the FAI "Ireland" and the IFA "Ireland". Shortly after the IFA rejoined FIFA in 1946, the FAI stopped selecting Northern players. The IFA stopped selecting southern players after the FAI complained to FIFA in 1950.
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Consolidation

From the late 1960s, association football began to achieve more widespread popularity. Donogh O'Malley, TD and then Minister for Education, began a new programme of state-funded schools in 1966, many with association football pitches and teams. The Gaelic Athletic Association's ban on members playing "foreign" games was lifted in 1971. RTÉ television, founded in 1962, and British television, broadcast association football regularly. Above all, the increasing success of the international side from the late 1980s gave increased television exposure, more fans, and more funds to the FAI.

Since 1988

However, increased media exposure also highlighted some inadequacies of its hitherto largely amateur organisation.
In January 1999, the FAI announced a planned national association football stadium, to be called Eircom Park after primary sponsors Eircom. This was to be a 45,000-seat stadium in City West, modelled on the Gelredome in Arnhem. It gradually became apparent that the initial forecasts of cost and revenue had been very optimistic. FAI and public support for project was also undermined by the announcement of the Stadium Ireland in Abbotstown, which would have 65,000 seats and be available free to the FAI, being funded by the state. The Eircom Park project was finally abandoned in March 2001, amid much rancour within the FAI.
During preparation for the 2002 World Cup, the captain of the senior football team, Roy Keane, left the training camp and returned to his home. He was critical of many aspects of the organisation and preparation of the team for the upcoming games, and public opinion in Ireland was divided. As a result of the incident, the FAI commissioned a report from consultants Genesis into its World Cup preparations. The "Genesis Report" made a number of damning criticisms regarding corruption and cronyism within the association, but was largely ignored. The complete report was never published for legal reasons. The FAI subsequently produced its own report of itself titled "Genesis II" and implemented a number of its recommendations.
In 2002, the FAI announced a deal with British Sky Broadcasting to sell broadcasting rights to Ireland's international matches, as well as domestic association football, to be televised on its satellite subscription service. The general public felt it should be on RTÉ, the free-to-air terrestrial service, in spite of their offering much lower rates. Faced with the prospect of the government legislating to prevent any deal, the FAI agreed to accept an improved, but still lower, offer from RTÉ.
In 2002, the FAI made an unsuccessful bid with the Scottish Football Association to host UEFA Euro 2008.
Following the respectable performance of the national team in the 2002 World Cup, the team's fortunes declined under the management of Mick McCarthy, Brian Kerr and Steve Staunton.
In September 2006, Lars-Christer Olsson, CEO of UEFA, was quoted as anticipating that Lansdowne Road in Dublin would stage the UEFA Cup Final in 2010, and that the FAI and the IFA would co-host the 2011 UEFA European Under-21 Football Championship. The 2010 final was ultimately awarded to Hamburg, but in January 2009, UEFA named Lansdowne Road as the host stadium for the renamed 2011 UEFA Europa League Final. In August 2010, chief executive John Delaney said the FAI would have repaid all of their stadium debt of €46 million within 10 years despite the disastrous sale of 10-year tickets for premium seats at the Aviva Stadium.
In November 2007 the FAI moved to new headquarters at the Sports Campus Ireland in Abbotstown. Its headquarters since the 1930s had been a Georgian terraced house at 80 Merrion Square, which was sold for a sum variously reported as "in excess of €6m" and "almost €9m".