{"id":135352,"date":"2025-09-11T14:02:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T14:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/135352\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T14:02:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T14:02:07","slug":"fai-appoint-former-rovers-chief-john-martin-as-new-director-of-football-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/135352\/","title":{"rendered":"FAI appoint former Rovers chief John Martin as new director of football \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hardly the happiest time to be taking up employment with the Football Association of Ireland<\/a>, what with on and off-the-field woes, but it was confirmed on Thursday that John Martin is taking over as its director of football. Martin replaces Marc Canham in a role that was titled chief football officer before his departure in April<\/a>. <\/p>\n

A 45-year-old native of Leixlip, Co Kildare, Martin played for UCD, Longford Town and Shamrock Rovers<\/a> during his League of Ireland<\/a> career while also working in financial services, spending close to two decades with Irish Life. <\/p>\n

He completed his Uefa A Licence in 2015 and had spells as assistant manager with Shelbourne<\/a> and Longford Town before taking over as chief executive officer of Shamrock Rovers in 2023. <\/p>\n

Back in April, Rovers co-owner Dermot Desmond bemoaned the imminent departure of Martin from the club<\/a>, describing it as \u201ca significant setback\u201d after it had gone \u201cfrom strength to strength\u201d under his stewardship and was \u201cnever in a stronger financial position\u201d.<\/p>\n

Desmond accused \u201csome non-executive directors\u201d of \u201cconstant interference\u201d in the work of the club\u2019s executive and volunteers, including Martin, making it an impossible environment for people to do their jobs effectively.<\/p>\n

Martin will, then, trust that he has a smoother time of it at Abbotstown, although that ambition hasn\u2019t always worked out too well for previous FAI employees.<\/p>\n

He will work directly with the head coaches of the Ireland men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams and the heads of Women and Girls\u2019 Football, Competitions, Coach Education, Refereeing and Football Strategic Projects. <\/p>\n

The FAI say he will also \u201coversee the Football Leadership Team as part of his core responsibilities, which will also include bringing alignment to women and girls\u2019 football, working with key stakeholders and delivering on strategic projects\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited to take up this role in what is a really important period for the development and future of Irish football,\u201d Martin said. \u201cThere is fantastic work being done all around the country, but there is a lot more that we can do to facilitate players, coaches, match officials, clubs, leagues, administrators and volunteers to be even better and continue to raise standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to working with people from all levels of the game to help make Irish football stronger and ensure that we are catering for everyone involved in our game.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FAI also announced on Thursday that Shane Robinson will work permanently as the association\u2019s technical officer having filled in as Canham\u2019s interim replacement since May<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Robinson, another former Rovers player, will continue to work with Ireland\u2019s underage teams and \u201clead on player development, talent identification and performance support\u201d.<\/p>\n

Martin will find a crammed in-tray waiting on his desk. Among the issues he faces will be the FAI\u2019s attempt to reduce staff numbers<\/a> by up to 30 per cent in an effort to reduce its \u20ac40 million debt and Eileen Gleeson\u2019s legal case against the association<\/a> over alleged gender discrimination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hardly the happiest time to be taking up employment with the Football Association of Ireland, what with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,93344,93345,93346,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-135352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-football-association-of-ireland-fai","12":"tag-john-martin","13":"tag-marc-canham","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}