FAI set to extend higher age limit rule

EMMET MALONE Soccer Correspondent Eight months after the rules were similarly changed so as to allow a number of the association's officer board to embark on new terms up until the limit, FAI delegates are set to raise the maximum age for membership of its larger council at an egm in Abbotstown.

The change, which will allow council members to stay on until they are 75 rather than 70 as at present, is a reversal of the reduction made at the behest of then general secretary Dr Tony O’Neill, who was reportedly anxious to generate more turnover amongst those who run the organisation.

Such was the enthusiasm for the idea at the time that the FAI teamed up with the Scots a few years later to champion the idea at Uefa which duly adopted it. It remains the rule at the European federation while Fifa has rejected any cap, most recently in Brazil last year when opponents of Sepp Blatter hoped that it might prevent the Swiss running for the presidency again.

John Delaney, who agreed a contract extension last year, at 47, won't be affected for a while yet but the move will help to maintain the current line up of a council that, like its ageing board, has been supportive of the chief executive.

But it will leave the association in the slightly strange position of being at odds with Uefa, whose “statutes, regulations, directives and decisions,” it is, according to its own rules, bound to respect on a policy which it itself was instrumental in having adopted by the Nyon-based organisation.

There is, in any case, no question really that the change to the rules will go through today, almost certainly without any opposition.

Amongst the other changes to be voted through this afternoon is one that will extend the scope of the rules relating to discrimination so as to cover the targeting of players on the basis of their sexual orientation.

Rule 91 currently provides for the punishment of those who abuse others on the basis of their ethnic origin, language or religion but the association has moved to update the regulation with those found guilty subject to a minimum ban of five games with scope for far more severe sanctions to be imposed according to the circumstances of the particular case.

There is some good news for Airtricity League defenders with the number of yellow cards required to trigger a first ban of a particular season set to be raised from four to five. Given the growing use of cautions in recent years to protect attackers, the speed with which players could pick up suspensions for a string of relatively minor offences had come in for repeated criticism.

There has, however, been no move to alter the position beyond that first ban, no proposal of a system of cards being rescinded after specified numbers of games in which none have been received and no attempt to alter the widely criticised carrying over of suspensions arising from multiple yellow cards from one season to the next.

This last rule will deprive the opening weekend derby between Shamrock Rovers and St Patrick’s Athletic of a string of the two teams’ most celebrated players including Keith Fahey, Stephen McPhail and Killian Brennan. In Fahey’s case, the club he committed the fouls for will actually now benefit from his punishment.

The wording of the rule, though, is actually to be tightened up so as to ensure that players moving between leagues in the close season are caught by it too.