New post looks demanding

The trawl for National League football's new chief administrator gets under the way over the next couple of days when advertisements will appear in the recruitment sections of national newspapers.

The idea of creating the new position originally came from St Patrick's Athletic but, between the original proposal and the agreement by clubs on Monday night to go ahead and recruit somebody, there was a considerable amount of discussion behind the scenes about just what it was that the league required.

Despite that, admits UCD's Brendan Dillon who chaired the league sub-committee which dealt with the issue, there remains some doubt regarding what it is that is being sought.

"I think that we are definitely looking for somebody with a proven track record in management and administration and I think that that will be made clear in the ads," says Dillon. "But this is the first of maybe three appointments and I think that the nature of the other two jobs will to some extent be influenced by who ends up filling this position and what their particular strengths are."

Having put together a package that includes a salary of between £50,000 and £70,000, it's clear that the league is, as a whole, fairly committed to investing in the new "commissioner", as he or she will be called. But given the reaction of people from outside the game who have suddenly found themselves struggling to cope with the demands of working for 22 clubs, it's far from certain that even that salary will be enough to attract the calibre of candidate that is being sought. "Well, it would be nice to have £120,000 to go out and throw at a successful head of a big plc but the reality is that we have budgets to work within and there are other positions to be filled from the money we have available to us," says Dillon.

"I think that it will be possible, though, to attract somebody with the sort of talents we are looking for. We need somebody who can drive the league forward, exploit the business and media potential that it has. But it also needs to be somebody who can provide real leadership in terms of the day-today administration because that, in a sense, will be the most important aspect of the job."

Dillon believes that the amount of authority the person enjoys will depend to some extent on their own performance but that certainly it would have been up to the commissioner, had he or she been in place, to deal with the dispute last week between St Patrick's Athletic and Bohemians. "There will be some decisions that will continue to be more naturally made by the clubs but there is a great deal of scope for the successful candidate to come in and, in consultation with the people who are there at present, effectively run things."

If the strengths of the person hired include marketing or media relations, then that might, in turn, affect the job specifications of the other positions to be filled within the organisation but that, says Dillon, is something that can't be decided until the commissioner is in place. The aim is that that should happen by the end of March.

The league's recent record is not overly impressive in this area, however, with the most recent attempt to appoint a marketing manager ending when Rita O'Reilly, reportedly disillusioned with the difficulties of operating within the structures of the league, returned to the business sector. This time the hope is that the lessons of earlier mistakes have been taken on board.