John Delaney - Ireland's Shame

Sport
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Hopefully he is - is he currently employed anywhere?

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That’s absolutely fucking hilarious. Any kind of a fucking monkey would have the cop on to at least condition the contract on no new negative news or something

What a shambles of an organisation

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Tom Hanks is the only one that could pull off that role.

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Working for Denis O’brien in the UK

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That contract will hardly hold up?

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Eamon Dunphy and his wife, the film and television producer Jane Gogan, sat in the back of a chauffeur-driven car on the way to rural Kilkenny. It was a Saturday night, and they were wondering why they had bothered to make the trip.

Dunphy had accepted an invitation to attend John Delaney’s 50th birthday party in the Mount Juliet golf club after being persuaded by one of his best friends, John Giles. Over the years Giles had grown close to Delaney, the chief executive of the FAI. The two would travel around the country dispensing cheques to amateur football clubs from a fundraising foundation bearing Giles’s name, that was run through the FAI.

Dunphy did not regard Delaney as a friend and was travelling to Kilkenny out of a sense of duty to Giles, but also with half a mind on the 10 Manchester United season tickets to which the FAI chief had access, and occasionally allowed Dunphy to use. He would always pay Delaney for the tickets, which were for a Man Utd-mad friend. The payments went through Delaney’s personal assistant in the FAI.

Dunphy recalls being taken for dinner by Delaney at a time when Giovanni Trapattoni was the Ireland manager and the football pundit was “on his case”. The FAI chief executive had “tried it on with me”, Dunphy says, asking him to lay off on his criticism of the Ireland team. Dunphy joked with Delaney that he could buy a short amnesty from criticism with each supply of Man Utd tickets, but he would not hold back from criticising the team when it was justified.

The party at Mount Juliet was a lavish affair, according to a number of people who attended. Bursts of flames from a pyrotechnic display greeted gift-clutching guests as they entered the old manor house, smiling as a professional photographer captured their arrivals.

Delaney’s fiancĂ©e, Emma English, a former model turned event planner, had organised a James Bond-themed party. English had been a firm favourite of newspaper photographers and editors since she began publicly accompanying Delaney to matches and other work events in 2014.

After their first joint TV appearance, on The Saturday Night Show in 2014, English and Delaney had dined with fellow guest Jane Seymour, the actress who played Bond girl Solitaire in Live and Let Die. That encounter, andDelaney’s love for Bond movies, had inspired the party theme.

The centrepiece of the drinks reception was a huge ice sculpture of a Walther PPK pistol, Bond’s weapon of choice. It was surrounded by the spy’s favourite martini cocktail glasses. Nods to Delaney’s football career came in the shape of several life-sized cardboard cutouts of a footballer with his head superimposed, wearing a white Ireland jersey emblazoned with the number 50 and a captain’s armband with the initials “JD”.

A huge birthday cake had been styled to look like the Aviva Stadium, which the FAI had part-owned since it was built on the site of the old Lansdowne Road ground in 2010. Delaney insisted the stadium was his finest achievement, despite poor ticket sales and persistent questions about whether the debt was too great for the association to repay.

The baked version of the stadium came with working floodlights and a miniature crowd holding “Happy birthday, John” banners. There was stadium advertising from Three, the Ireland team’s main sponsor. Its Irish boss Robert Finnegan, a Waterford man like Delaney, was among the guests, as was Davy Keogh, a well-known Ireland supporter.

When the guests moved from the old manor house towards a large marquee, they were greeted by waiters in skeleton costumes with face masks and top hats like the villains from Live and Let Die. The Bond baddies served drinks to each table. Around the large marquee, banners depicted a silhouette of a tuxedoed Bond holding his pistol.

A sign over the posters read “Happy birthday John Delaney”. The iconic Bond 007 logo, incorporating a pistol, had been modified to “John Delaney 0050”.

For the many football people in the crowd, the extravagance of the party — which was being run by Franc, a well-known wedding planner — made them laugh in bemusement. Some assumed Delaney, with his €360,000-a-year salary, must be picking up the tab. Others weren’t sure. Many guests had received their invites from an FAI official using an FAI email address, and FAI events staff had helped organise the party.

The invitees sat around 19 tables that had tall white centrepieces filled with large ostrich feathers. Among them was Aleksander Ceferin, president of Uefa, the European governing body for football. Delaney had been elected to the Uefa executive committee in April. Having led the FAI since 2004, Delaney was now one of the most powerful men in European football as well.

A number of other senior Uefa officials, including Noel Mooney, a former FAI executive, were also in attendance. The FAI had considered booking helicopters to fly the dignitaries to Kilkenny, but were deterred by high winds in the aftermath of Hurricane Ophelia.

The other guests included Martin O’Neill, the Ireland manager, and Alan Kelly, a TD from Tipperary, where Delaney has strong family connections. Sports journalists John Duggan and Paul Collins, who worked for Newstalk and Today FM, were also present. Their radio stations were owned by Denis O’Brien, the billionaire who had pumped €12m into the FAI over the past decade to help it pay the salaries of Trapattoni, O’Neill and O’Neill’s assistant Roy Keane.

Delaney, wearing an open-necked shirt and suit, and English, in a blue evening gown, entered the marquee together as the invited guests stood and rhythmically clapped to the sound of Put ’em Under Pressure, the Ireland team’s anthem from the 1990 World Cup. Delaney shook hands and backslapped guests to the chorus of “OlĂ©, OlĂ©, OlĂ©, OlĂ©â€ on his way to his seat at the top of the room.

Brendan O’Carroll, the creator of Mrs Brown’s Boys, delivered a mild roast of Delaney from the stage. O’Carroll, a guest along with his wife, Jennifer Gibney, was performing for free. The MC on the night was Aidan Power, a TV presenter. The paid musical act was the High Kings, a popular Irish folk band.

Dunphy remembers being bowled over by the overt affection that Delaney and English showed for each other. “I thought she was an incredible-looking woman,” he says of English, a separated mother of four. “You see people in photographs, but seeing her up close, she was beautiful. She was tugging out of him like, ‘He’s my man.’ I just couldn’t get my head around it. Like, he isn’t God’s gift, at all. There is nothing suave about John Delaney. He’s gauche and awful.”

There are times you just have to suspend your disbelief, Dunphy says, and this was “one coupling that I had to just suspend my disbelief about”.

While Delaney loves to sing but has little talent, English has a fine voice. She took to the stage with the High Kings for an acoustic version of Mercy, a song by the Welsh singer Duffy about a woman driven mad over her lust for a man. Delaney danced and clapped in front of the stage. He would later sing Daisy a Day, a 1970s song by Jud Strunk about a man’s undying love for a woman.

A lengthy video, professionally shot and edited, included tributes to Delaney from people who could not travel for the occasion. The highlight was a message from Sir Alex Ferguson, the former Manchester United manager. When Delaney took to the stage, he read out a letter from President Michael D Higgins, a keen football fan. It noted that landmark birthdays “are special moments in life” and passed on his “best wishes”.

Delaney thanked “my own staff” for their brilliant work at the party. To nervous laughter from the crowd, he joked that it wasn’t a part of the normal jobs of “his” FAI staff to organise birthday parties. “They won’t be doing it again for a while, trust me,” he laughed.

Among those looking on were senior directors of the FAI board and some of their wives. Tony Fitzgerald, the FAI president, and Michael Cody, its honorary secretary, both wearing green ties, took to the stage to make a presentation of a silver plate to their chief executive.

Delaney then paid a tearful tribute to English. “He started slobbering about their love,” says Dunphy. “It was cringe city.”

Dunphy hadn’t seen much of Giles, who spent much of the night with Dr Alan Byrne, the Ireland team doctor, having a sing-song. To make things worse, Dunphy had been seated at the same table as Michael Ring, the Fine Gael government minister for rural development, whom he disliked. As Delaney dissolved into tears while professing his love for his fiancĂ©e, Dunphy was getting kicks under the table from Gogan. The couple decided to make their excuses and leave early.

In the absence of Dunphy, a renowned party animal in his day, the celebrations went on until 5am.

On the following Monday morning Mario Rosenstock, Today FM’s resident mimic, aired a well-informed skit about the party on The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show. Dempsey interviewed Rosenstock’s “John Delaney”, who explained that the birthday party was still going on despite a mistake by the “FAI catering committee” which meant the celebrations did not start in a brewery as planned. The FAI’s inability to organise a piss-up in a brewery was a running gag of Rosenstock’s.

This skit also included “Roy Keane” incredulously reading out a scripted tribute to Delaney that praised his “generosity, razor-sharp intelligence, general competence and utter professionalism”. Finally, a laughing “Delaney” was presented with the bill for the party. The clacking sound of the till printing out the final receipt seemed never-ending.

Rosenstock’s gag about the bill was more on the mark than anyone knew. Mazars accountants would later establish the FAI had spent more than €80,000 on the party. This included €26,293 to Mount Juliet, €25,000 to Franc, €7,595 for chauffeurs and €3,609 for helicopters that never got off the ground. In December 2017, Delaney made a repayment of €50,000. The deficit was carried by an organisation that was already in a catastrophic financial position. Delaney had run it into the ground. But it would be a year-and-a-half before he was exposed

Sounds like a great party

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67

Kim Jong Un is in the ha’penny place compared to Dela

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You’d wonder about the type of character that has backed Delaney throughout and still does no doubt - the likes of @Bandage, @Little_Lord_Fauntleroy, @peddlerscross, @Big_Dan_Campbell et al
 They all have questions to answer
 the pretend Italian @Fulvio_From_Aughnacloy also but corruption is par for the course in Italy so he had to pretend to support Delaney.

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69

hold on


you follow a sport with bigoted xenophobic rules which is overtly political & whose politics exclude a lot of irish people.

Dont come out with some outrage about how a private company chooses to spend money

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Stop sweep sweeping and deal with the issue at hand.

You claim to be a soccer man yet wont condemn Delaney.

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what issue?

a private company spending money in way that you dont agree with?

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1 million euro in expenses in his last 5 years,picked up by the FAI.Youd have to admire his neck.

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Good stakeholder management from John

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You’ve lost the tiny little bit of credibility you had on here 


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The IRFU pro Unionist private school boy click have had to come in to save @Little_Lord_Fauntleroy 
 Oh my.

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the IRFU dosnt have political goals like the GGA, withdraw that remark

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How much did the fai net from the Henry hand ball incident?

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They’re Tim’s goals.

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€3m bonus for staying in his job :grin:

€80k for his birthday :grin:

€25k to Franc :grin:

A fucking tinpot organisation on its knees. How is this cunt not in jail.

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He’s BFF’s with Dinny sure