FAI's mountain of issues overshadow Jonathan Hill's rocky reign

Upheaval at the Football Association of Ireland once again. After serving three-and-a-half years of a five-year stint, Jonathan Hill will depart his role as CEO on 30 April, or early April as they presumably term it in Abbotstown.

Hill, a marketing guru, is set to leave with the FAI still having no permanent men's team manager, no marketing and communications director, and only having just finally secured a main men's team sponsor after four years without one - which, in the end, turned out to be the already existing sponsor of the women's team.

The Yorkshireman was appointed in 2020 in the wake of Irish football's greatest ever crisis, the association having run up €70 million in debts by the end of 2019, requiring a government bailout and financial assistance from UEFA to stave off liquidation.

In his previous life, Hill attracted notice as the marketing manager of Euro 96, supposedly responsible for the 'Football Comes Home' slogan, which Baddiel and Skinner then ran with. As the FA's commercial director in the 2000s, he doubled their commercial income during a five-year cycle in charge.

His non-Irishness and detached technocratic bearing was regarded as a positive among the politicos who took an interest, sparking memories of your Ajai Chopras and your Matthew Elderfields from their own sphere.

Better that than recruit from within the warring factions of Irish football, where everyone prominent seemed to hate each other for some petty, historical reason.

His aloofness extended to living in London for the entirety of his time in the post, a source of extreme contention among the media, which quizzed him on the matter regularly. This resulted in some cost to the FAI, who had to foot the bill of his travel costs to and from