Lessons hopefully learnt from licensing saga

thejollyrodger

Lessons hopefully learnt from licensing saga
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=94&si=1296027&issue_id=11754

UEFA'S primary aim when it introduced club licensing was to ensure that clubs across Europe did their business properly.

That meant an end to bounced cheques, unpaid wages and transfer fees plus sub-standard facilities. It was designed to ensure that professional football clubs were no longer run as cowboy outfits where best practice meant a good shooting session.

In Ireland, licensing was particularly needed for a soccer industry that had some ambitious clubs who wanted to be taken seriously but needed something that would also force the other clubs to act professionally and ethically.

Three different FAI chief executives - Bernard O'Byrne, Brendan Menton and Fran Rooney - were involved in the evolution of the FAI's club licensing system and the creation of one of the most highly regarded manuals presented to UEFA.

The bar for a Premier Division licence was deliberately set high and when Derry obtained the first one on appeal, then FAI Chief Executive Fran Rooney felt the decision to seek high standards was vindicated.

According to Rooney, he and his staff then proceeded to work on bringing the four European entrants up to scratch and ensure they obtained their A licences before UEFA's May 31 deadline.

However, the whole licensing system was thrown into disrepute when their applications for A Licences were heard, not by the Licensing Committee but the Appeals Body.

According to the rules, applications should only be considered by the Appeals Body within five working days of a decision being made by the First Instance Committee. The lawyers would have had a field day if the Appeals Body had rejected any of the applications and effectively slammed the lucrative European door shut. Clubs would have had no alternative avenue to travel other than the legal route.

As if that wasn't bad enough, it then emerged that the Appeals Body were going to be unable to produce a quorum at the time and date it had decided to meet, so a new member was co-opted onto the committee hours before the key meeting.

The rules stated that there must be a vacancy before a new member can be co-opted and secondly the position must be filled by the FAI's Board of Management at its next meeting.

Despite this, the Appeals Board met, awarded the four licences and publicly announced their decisions. It subsequently took a series of frantic phone calls, prompted by inquisitive calls from the media, to secure the necessary approval from the members of the FAI's Board of Management for a co-option that was unnecessary because there wasn't a vacancy.

The FAI has still to adequately explain why the Committee of First Instance was by-passed on that occasion. Speaking at a press conference in Amsterdam in June, Rooney stated that they had received permission from UEFA to by-pass the First Instance Committee and the Chairman of the Appeals Board said in a personal statement that he was happy "on the verified evidence supplied" to proceed with the hearing of the applications.

Rooney's promise to produce the relevant e-mail from UEFA went unfulfilled and he never revealed what the "verified evidence" was.

However, Marcel Benz, who administers the club licensing scheme on behalf of UEFA, confirmed that discussions had taken place but denied that UEFA had instructed the FAI to by-pass the First Instance Committee.

"UEFA and the FAI had discussions about the problems faced with the fulfilment of the infrastructure criteria by the Irish clubs. The FAI proposed to us that they would like to re-open the core process (assessment process of clubs) for clubs sportingly qualified for Europe.

"As UEFA is not responsible for the definition of this core process we just expressed our opinion and stressed that the FAI should discuss this matter with their clubs in order to be transparent.

"Finally, UEFA insisted that our only concern was that the final and binding decisions on licence granting had to be finalised by the FAI competent bodies before May 31, 2004.

"The decision to re-open the core process was within the competence of the FAI and not UEFA."

Although the FAI vehemently denied that the process by which those five licences were awarded was seriously flawed the timetable for the awarding of the 2005 Licences makes interesting reading.

It includes provision for a meeting of the FAI Licensing Committee to make first instance decisions for those club who have qualified for UEFA competitions and haven't obtained their UEFA Licence by that time.

Thankfully, the lessons of last summer appear to have been learnt and hopefully in 2005 the Licensing system will achieve the relationship of trust which it claims is one of its key objectives.

Gerry McDermott
Bootroom

I wonder if the E.L clubs will finally implement club licensing

WhiteWashMan

what exactly do you mean by club licensing?

thejollyrodger

The A Licence thing. All the E.L were meant to have them.

KdjaCL

http://www.uefa.com/uefa/news/Kind=8/newsId=140941.html

Tis all there.

Bottom line FAI pushed this forward to cover up their own problems (genisis) therefore be seen to be doing somfin right.
Fair play to Derry who actually got it (with help from Local council which was nice)




kdjac