By Andrew Warshaw
October 27 – John Delaney, the colourful and often controversial chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland, has quit his additional role as vice‑president at the Olympic Council of Ireland.
Delaney made the announcement in a statement on Tuesday night but denied any involvement in the ticketing scandal that rocked the latter organisation during the Rio Olympic Games.
“Having given the matter careful consideration, I have made the decision to step down as the FAI’s volunteer member of the 13-person OCI committee board, with immediate effect,” Delaney said in a statement posted on the FAI website.
Delaney is the first board member to quit since its chief, Pat Hickey, was charged in Brazil over an alleged scheme to sell Olympic tickets illegally.
Hickey was arrested in August at a luxury beachfront hotel and spent time in a maximum security prison. He temporarily stood aside as head of the OCI and as Europe’s top member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) pending the outcome.
Delaney had been tipped by Hickey to succeed him before the ticket scandal, in which 10 people have been charged, emerged and insisted last month that Rio police had not contacted him despite an order being issued for the seizure of his passport, later withdrawn.
Delaney said in the statement that he “had no role or involvement in the OCI’s handling of ticketing arrangements for the Rio Olympic Games” and that he would cooperate with any investigation.
“I am fully confident that in due course my position and non-involvement in these matters will be clarified.”
One of the reasons for his decision to step down, he said, was that “as an Executive Committee member of the OCI, my role was never active in the day-to-day running of the OCI and as I mentioned previously, I was in a position to attend only five of the last 13 board meetings prior to the Rio Olympics.”
Delaney is no stranger to headlines. Last year he admitted the Irish federation had accepted a reported €5 million loan from Sepp Blatter, then president of FIFA, after the Republic controversially lost a World Cup qualifier to France courtesy of Thierry Henry’s infamous handball.
Irish reports said the money helped to pay the FAI’s bill for redeveloping the national stadium and that, recorded in the FAI’s accounts as an interest-free loan, it was later written off, as agreed, when Ireland failed to qualify for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
The FAI were ready to sue FIFA but pulled back from legal action after being given the loan. Delaney was quoted as saying at the time: “We felt we had a legal case against FIFA because of how the World Cup play-off hadn’t worked out for us with the Henry handball.”
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