Emmet Malone profiles the man who it is hoped will lead the FAI and Irish soccer into a new golden era
The FAI yesterday named Fran Rooney, the former head of Baltimore Technologies who for six years also managed the Irish senior women's team, as the organisation's new chief executive. The 46-year-old Dubliner will take up the post in June.
Rooney's involvement with football stretches back to his teens when he not only played the game but also served as secretary of his local club, Quarry Albion. As a player he had spells with Home Farm, Shamrock Rovers, St Patrick's Athletic and Bohemians, although he was not, as he says himself, particularly outstanding on the pitch and he duly progressed into the coaching side of the game.
He obtained some coaching qualifications and went on to manage the senior women's national team between 1986 and '92. He is said to enjoy a good relationship with Brian Kerr who he would have come into contact with at various times over the course of his involvement with the game.
He is no stranger to Irish football's administrative side either, having served on the FAI's senior council as the representative of the women's association for two years in the late 80s. But it is his vast experience of the commercial world outside the game that will have attracted the association's officers, and their professional recruitment advisors, to the Dubliner who was once hailed as one of Ireland's most successful businessmen.
Currently the chairman of Nirvana Technologies, Addoceo Digital Media, Skillspro and Data Direction, Rooney has broad experience of the banking, government, and corporate sectors, having previously served in key roles with National Irish Bank, the Irish Government and Post Office, Quay Financial Software, Meridian International and IIU.
But it is his association with Baltimore, a company that specialised in developing security related software for the e-commerce sector, which he took from obscurity to FT100 status, that Rooney is best known. He acquired huge personal wealth as a result of the company's initial success but he subsequently parted company with the operation after its share price crashed during the worldwide downturn in the technology sector.
Baltimore's ultimate slide aside, it is clearly just the sort of background envisaged by business consultant Alistair Gray when he recommended in the Genesis report he compiled last year that the association seek to appoint a more commercially orientated chief executive.
There will, however, be a delay of a couple of months before Rooney can take on the post as he has a variety of commitments to the businesses in which he retains a stake between now and the middle of June. He apparently intends to maintain some links with those companies but it is not anticipated within Merrion Square that this will in any way affect his ability to do the chief executive's job.
"I see my role as providing the leadership for the FAI and the football community across the country through the period of significant change which lies ahead," he said yesterday. "We have world class International soccer teams and we should aspire to match this success on the park with a similarly strong Football Association.
"I believe that the work of the Association and its people, particularly at grass roots level, has at times been overshadowed, he added. "The many positive achievements of all connected with the game provide a solid base from which to build future success. The Association's main priority is to create the environment to increase participation in football at every level throughout the country and this ambition remains at the core of what the FAI is really about."
He will get his first chance to meet the current crop of club and league representatives from around the country on Friday when he will attend a Board of Management meeting at Dublin's Red Cow Inn. Afterwards he will be officially unveiled to members of the media. It is envisaged he will play a crucial role in reshaping and reorganising an association that has been repeatedly battered by internal disputes and allegations of poor organisation in recent years.
The Genesis report recommended wholesale changes at almost every level of the organisation and it is Rooney who will now be charged with implementing many of those reforms. Although it remains to be seen how faithfully the association's officers will want to follow the recommendations contained in the report, it does seem likely that Rooney will be at the heart of the process of appointing a new management team within Merrion Square. It was envisaged by Gray that this newly appointed group would assume a considerable degree of control over many of the areas currently overseen by elected members of the association's various boards and committees.
With the identity of the new chief executive now decided it is possible that significant progress on the required new structures within the association could be voted upon at the organisation's a.g.m. which is scheduled for July in Galway.
