NIALL QUINN ADMITS he became ‘very, very angry’ watching affairs within the FAI before he ultimately became part of the association’s new regime tasked with getting Irish football back on track.
The former Ireland international was appointed interim deputy chief executive last month, making up part of the new “Visionary” group of new chairman, Roy Barrett, and interim CEO Gary Owens.
“I’m more in on the football side, and I tended to look at the structures that are in place there,” Quinn said on last night’s Late Late Show.
“From the outside looking in I was doing my football analysis with Virgin Media and that was going to a particular points where I felt I didn’t know enough about it and probably thought I needed to find out a bit more. I was trying to work out what was happening.
“That day in the Oireachtas where the association went to speak to government and was probably one of the poorest parts of television that football has ever had there when we watched what went on there. I’d been inquisitive but that was the moment when I said it was a Banana Republic and that was the moment I said this is anger now that I feel.
“And then a couple of things happened after that – there was an AGM in Trim that I felt hadn’t gone far enough. And as bad as I felt after that, it was only really the pain before Christmas when the reality of the actual debt that was in the FAI, that’s when I was like ‘Ah here, this is really bad’.
The Late Late Show / Twitter
The Late Late Show / Twitter / Twitter
Asked by Ryan Tubridy about his relationship with former FAI boss, John Delaney, Quinn said: “I would’ve known him when he came on the scene and was involved heavily around Japan and Korea in 2002.
“He kind of took the reins up then, I quit then so I wouldn’t have had a lot of interaction with him. I joined a League of Ireland review panel for one meeting some years later and I was asked to leave it and so I did. And from that moment on I never felt a gra for anything that was happening in the FAI.
“They were very good to me at one point. They gave me a testimonial which I’ll always be grateful for and of course I had one of the longest careers; I had 16 years playing with the senior team.
“So I’ll always be grateful but I got very, very angry last year, there’s no doubt about that.”
