Mark Tighe - Champagne Football

Originally from Donegal, Mark Tighe is the legal correspondent of the Sunday Times in Ireland. As well as covering legal affairs, he specializes in investigative reporting. He was Irish Newspaper News Reporter of the Year in 2018 and 2019. In 2019 he also won the Journalist of the Year Award for his reporting on the FAI.

Born and raised in Dublin, Paul Rowan is the Irish football correspondent for the Sunday Times, and the author of The Team That Jack Built and Making Ryans Daughter. In 2019 he was joint winner of the NewsBrands Campaigning Journalism and Investigative Journalism Awards (alongside Mark Tighe and Colin Coyle) for his work on the FAI.

For Cara, Finn, Lyla and Rory Tighe
and
To the players, staff and supporters of Archibald Albion FC

Eamon Dunphy and his wife, the film and television producer Jane Gogan, sat in the back of a chauffeur-driven car. They were being taken to rural Kilkenny. It was a Saturday night. They wondered why they were bothering to make the trip.

Dunphy had accepted an invitation to attend John Delaneys fiftieth birthday party in the Mount Juliet golf club after being persuaded by one of his best friends, John Giles. The two had worked side by side for over twenty years as the wise old men of RT televisions football coverage, having played for Ireland together as young men: Giles one of the finest players of his generation, Dunphy a journeyman.

Over the years Giles had grown close to Delaney, the Chief Executive of the Football Association of Ireland. The two would travel around the country dispensing cheques to amateur football clubs from a fundraising foundation bearing Giless name that was run through the FAI.

Although Dunphy had been publicly supportive of Delaney as the FAIs boss, he did not regard Delaney as a friend. He was travelling down to Kilkenny out of a sense of duty to Giles, but also with half a mind on the ten Manchester United season tickets that Delaney had access to and occasionally allowed Dunphy to use. The pundit would always pay Delaney for the tickets, which were for a Man United-mad friend. The payments went through Delaneys personal assistant in the FAI.

Dunphy recalls being taken for dinner by Delaney at a time when Giovanni Trapattoni was the Ireland manager and Dunphy was on his case. The FAI CEO had tried it on with me, Dunphy says, asking the pundit to lay off on his criticism of the Irish team. Dunphy recalls that while he joked with Delaney that he could buy a short amnesty from criticism with each supply of Man United tickets, he then made it clear that he would not hold back in criticizing the team when he felt it was justified.

The party at Mount Juliet was a lavish affair, according to a number of people who attended. Bursts of flames from a pyrotechnic display greeted guests clutching gifts as they entered the old manor house, smiling as a professional photographer captured their arrivals.

Delaneys fiance, Emma English, a former model turned event planner, had organized a James Bond-themed party. English, a striking blonde, had been a firm favourite of newspaper photographers and their editors since she began publicly accompanying Delaney to matches and other work events in 2014.

After their first joint TV appearance, on The Saturday Night Show, presented by Brendan OConnor, in 2014, English and Delaney had dined with fellow guest Jane Seymour, the actress who played Bond-girl Solitaire in Live and Let Die. That encounter, and Delaneys love for James Bond movies, had inspired the party theme. (A previous birthday party English had thrown for Delaney had had a teddy-bear theme, because, as she had told the nation on that TV chat show, Delaney was her teddy bear.)

The centrepiece of the drinks reception was a huge ice sculpture of a Walther PPK pistol, Bonds weapon of choice. The ice sculpture was surrounded by the spys favourite martini cocktail glasses. Nods to Delaneys football career came in the shape of several life-sized cardboard cut-outs of a footballer with Delaneys head superimposed, wearing a white Ireland jersey emblazoned with the number 50 and a captains armband with the initials JD.

A huge birthday cake had been styled to look like the Aviva Stadium, which the FAI had part-owned since it was built on the site of the old Lansdowne Road ground in 2010. Delaney had repeatedly claimed the stadium was his finest achievement, despite poor ticket sales and persistent media questions about whether the stadium debt was too great for the association to repay.

The baked version of the stadium came with working floodlights and a miniature crowd holding Happy birthday, John banners. There was stadium advertising from Three, the Ireland teams main sponsor. Among the guests on the night was Davy Keogh, the well-known Ireland supporter. A Davy Keogh says hello flag a fixture at nearly every Irish away game was visible on the cake.

When the guests moved from the old manor house towards a large marquee, they were greeted by waiters in skeleton costumes with face masks and top hats like the villains from Live and Let Die. The Bond baddies served drinks to each table. Around the large marquee, banners depicted a silhouette of a tuxedoed Bond holding his pistol. A sign over the posters read Happy birthday John Delaney. The iconic Bond 007 logo, incorporating a pistol, had been modified to John Delaney 0050.

For the many football people in the crowd, the extravagance of the party which was being run by Franc, a well-known wedding planner who had his own TV show made them laugh in bemusement. Some assumed Delaney, with his 360,000 salary, must be picking up the tab. Others werent sure. Many of the guests had received their invites directly from an FAI official using an FAI email address, and FAI events staff had worked on organizing the party.

The invitees sat around nineteen tables that had tall white centrepieces filled with large ostrich feathers. If my wedding is half as big as this Id be lucky, mused one FAI staff member working on the event.

Amongst the guests was Aleksander eferin, the President of UEFA, the European governing body for football. Delaney had just been elected to the UEFA Executive Committee in April. Having led the FAI since 2004, Delaney was now one of the most powerful men in European football. A number of other senior UEFA officials, including Noel Mooney, a former FAI executive, were also in attendance. The FAI had considered booking helicopters to fly the dignitaries to Kilkenny, but were deterred by high winds in the aftermath of Hurricane Ophelia.

The other guests included Martin ONeill, the Ireland manager, and Alan Kelly, a former government minister and TD from Tipperary, where Delaney has strong family connections. Sports journalists John Duggan and Paul Collins, who worked for Newstalk and Today FM, were also present. Their radio stations were owned by Denis OBrien, the billionaire who had pumped some 12 million into the FAI over the past decade to help it pay the salaries of Trapattoni, ONeill and ONeills assistant, Roy Keane.