Easy to see why they switched off RTE

Emmet Malone/On Irish soccer: A few years back, the officers of one of the country's less prominent sports organisations received a query from their auditors regarding expenditure of a few hundred pounds over the course of the previous year which had been listed, in documents forwarded by them, under the heading "National Lottery".

As it turned out the association was having a weekly punt on the lotto in the hope of winning a jackpot with which they could build themselves a centre of excellence.

It was an unorthodox scheme, of course, and one that the accountants promptly halted but after years of state-sponsored neglect overseen by one sports minister after another it is still easy to understand how those handed the task of developing a sport in pre-tiger Ireland were reduced to thinking that the only way the lottery was ever going to transform their organisation was if its numbers came up.

Virtually everybody who attended Saturday's a.g.m. of the FAI would have remembered similarly desperate days within the association, days that the organisation only started to put behind it during the past couple of years as first commercial and television revenues started to grow significantly and then, in the wake of the eircom Park deal, government money finally started to be made available in significant amounts.

The fact that most of them were around when things were so grim presumably goes a long way towards explaining why there was virtually no dissent from the floor as the implications of the €7.2 million deal with Sky signed a couple of weeks ago were discussed at the weekend.

The greatly increased levels of grant aid currently being received by clubs and leagues around the country (the association helps to vet applications but receives only a small percentage of the money directly) is part of a three-year arrangement and just 48 hours after the government had signalled its abandonment of even the pretence of free third level education the delegates will have been acutely aware just how quickly the cash might all dry up again.

For the National League, which has traditionally received about a fifth of the domestic TV rights deal, the Sky contract should be worth just short of €1.5 million, not enough to build a single really decent stand at one of the league's 22 grounds, but still more than the entire eircom sponsorship package is worth over its four-year lifespan.

If the money can be used in such a way that it can attract matching grant funds towards capital projects, though, the real value of the deal could considerably exceed the initial amount.

Privately, various club representatives expressed regret that RTE would no longer be involved in covering the game here and there is certainly some concern over what sort of job TV3 will do with covering the league.

None, however, appeared to believe that there had been a realistic choice involved for those involved in negotiating with a broadcaster who paid virtually nothing for the association's games as long as it enjoyed a monopoly position in the market up until the mid nineties and then sought to reduce by more than a third the €635,000 it has paid each year since 1998 when negotiating for the next four years on the rather laughable basis that the international rights market is depressed at present.

IT remained buoyant enough, however, that Sky were prepared to pay more than €7 million simply to prevent RTE screening the home games - that is, after all, all it gets for its money as it had already secured the actual rights to the games for around €5.5 million in a deal signed last year - and €17 million for a package of games that include three of Ireland and Scotland's away games as well as two of England's.

What some delegates did express some concern about on Saturday was the damage all of this may have done to the association's relationship with the government, but senior officials within the association insist that their meetings with ministers remain largely positive.

The association, those ministers will know of course, like most sports organisations, offers a good return on the government's money. Even before last year's deal on the stadium issue was reached, the association had, under Bernard O'Byrne, greatly expanded its activities in areas like coaching with thousands of kids around the country benefiting from its investment in staff and facilities during the past few often difficult years.

And the achievements of the country's under age teams at a time when countries all over Europe have been investing heavily in their own youth programmes is a credit to people involved with the association, many of whom are routinely written off as idiots by sections of the media.

Their decision to take Sky's money on this occasion was repeatedly described as scandalous when, in reality, RTE's handling of the affair, its attempt to use moral blackmail against the association when it was so heavily outbid by its rival and the subsequent handling of the story by its news department was the far greater outrage.

It was the latter factor that rushed a government hell bent for the past five years on privatising anything that could be sold into considering what would in effect be the nationalisation of a number of sports events.

It will be wonderful if they go through with it, although it would surely be unthinkable that they will do it in such a way that sports organisations are deprived of what everybody now knows is the real value of their assets.

It will be problematic to come up with a fair mechanism for moving the issue forward, but, if one is found, then the reality is that, just as was the case with the eircom Park controversy, the GAA and IRFU will end up benefiting from a deal negotiated with the government after the FAI had taken all of the initial flack.

As for Merrion Square, the closest it really came to producing a scandal during the past few months was when the members of the association's council failed during the run up to the World Cup to resist the temptation to follow the example set by their predecessors and voted to make €100,000 of the FAI's money available to themselves to help with the cost of going to Japan for Ireland's group games.

Fortunately, the significance of the sum involved is at least slightly diminished by the increased television revenue they can expect during the next few years.