No pain, and possibly no gain either

One day at an airport a punter in a queue at departures gave Ray Treacy the name of an island in the central pacific. Saipan.

The Official Travel Agent by Appointment to the FAI wrote the name down on the back of a cigarette box.

Saipan. The place was generally infamous before the Irish team arrived there for its World Cup preparations.

People who have been there generally describe the place as the whorehouse of the pacific or the sweathouse of the pacific.

Its wartime history was far darker than that. Its place in the general Irish sporting memory has become notorious.

Perhaps, in years to come, those who were on the island will have Saipan reunions. There might be veterans' parades and perhaps an emotional return to the island.

In the meantime, we will have to make do with the acres of newsprint and oceans of controversy which mention of the island stirs up.

Last night, as the latest instalment in the Saipan Series of Unfortunate Events we had the Genesis report which, like Saipan itself, transpired not to be all it was cracked up to be.

We expected tailbacks as FAI officials queued to walk the plank.

We expected blood on the walls. Mea culpas. The dawn of a new day. We came for hara-kiri.

They gave us club milks.

In fact, we didn't even have the Genesis report, we had the "presentation version" of it, a slide-show replete with bullet pointed sentences.

No blood on the walls just pictures and general observations.

Some parts of the report were baffling. Others were disappointing. The reaction by the FAI was relief. Brendan Menton, too nice and too earnest a man, for all these shenanigans, walked the plank, or at least walked the carpet into what will presumably be a different office within Merrion Square.

The rest of the FAI executive body looked like schoolboys who'd been told that they'd be getting off lightly this time so long as they promised to pull up their socks.

The Genesis report, not surprisingly really, is what one would get if one collated all the conversations people have been having since Saipan and then watered the results down so that nobody's feelings were hurt.

We are told that there is not a "culture of discipline in the management of the FAI" and that Genesis found most "basic management disciplines non existent."

This sounds bad, but the lads who will be pulling their socks up seemed not to think it applied specifically to them. They wouldn't be resigning, they'd be building for the future.

"The report noted that the FAI "fail to even recognise good organisational practice employed elsewhere in sport, including Ireland."

Yet these are the boys who'll be handling the transition to the brave new world.

What will we find when we get there? Recommendations for future travel include "better planning and attention to detail" and "all training facilities and equipment to be checked and delivered on time".

Very astute Sherlock.

More amusingly, one of the lessons from Saipan suggested by the players is "more protection from the press".

These presumably are players other than the ones who invited the media to a barbecue and then drank with them till dawn broke?

The five full days spent in Saipan draw praise for placing the players virtually in the right time-zone, for providing a sympathetic personal environment and for acclimatisation.

In the version of the report released to the public and press, nobody gets rapped for not investigating the state of the pitch beforehand, there is no detailed breakdown of the communications process between Mick McCarthy, Roy Keane and the FAI, no explanation as to why a press conference was called within minutes of the fateful Keane-McCarthy bust-up, no discussion of the FAI's role in these events and the negotiations which followed.

There is no examination of the Irish management's disastrous press relations, of the comical denouement in Izumo, no hint as to why having got Roy Keane through a week on what the report concedes was a bad pitch it was beyond the wit of all concerned to get an obviously troubled player on to Izumo the next morning.

It is stated that the ticketing arrangements were "more professional than in 1994".

Had these arrangements been handled by a band of roving monkeys they would have been better than in 1994.

Overall, the FAI have been left with a long post-it note filled with things to do. There'll be new positions, there'll be plans and objectives, there'll be spanking new policies and practices.

And the time of money will be gone. They stand now without a manager, with their best player in exile, with no stadium, no general secretary, no grounds to support a comical Euro bid, no confidence from the general public.

Personally, I blame the media.