IT IS THE main event for the ‘Football Family’.

Friday night’s delegates’ dinner will involve food and drink, reunions and rivalries, laughs and some squabbles.

Everyone will be on their best behaviour on Saturday when John Delaney toasts ‘successes’ over the year. The assembled family will nod approvingly, even if they’re inwardly unhappy. We’re expected to present a unified, contented front.

I’ve attended a few AGMs, arriving after the dinner as it usually and unhelpfully clashes with a round of League of Ireland fixtures. The Friday is genuinely enjoyable; people swap stories and memories and it’s a nice opportunity to interact informally with FAI staff and people across the game. It’s also where most of the weekend’s real business is conducted, away from the media gaze.

Building relationships across the game is important. Absorbed in our own problems, we can forget that every part of the football family faces difficulties as it continues to grow (though not necessarily mature) independently of us. The AGM confirms that it is a huge family, albeit a dysfunctional one where we’re considered the problem child.

On this weekend other family members take the attention from us; journalists will sarcastically count and tweet the number of times John Delaney appears in the three-minute ‘Festival of Football’ video showcasing the preceding week’s photo calls and events.

Despite this, it’s worth highlighting the success of the festival and decision to move the AGM around the country. While some of the events are truly nothing more than photo opportunities, the feedback from local clubs is always positive as the suits in the FAI tend to be accompanied by well-known former internationals.

Source: Donall Farmer/INPHO

When the week-long festival and dinner are over, we turn to the pomp and ceremony around the formal meeting; a dry and consistently uneventful review of the year, the budget and the — always positive — state of the association.

Sometimes there’s a rule change to vote on, but there’s no arguing in front of the media. The more contentious debates will result in whispered agreements over Friday’s dinner, the biggest issues will be handled by emergency meetings far from the media. Two years ago, a hastily convened National Council meeting directly after the AGM conveniently required that the media leave the room.

Be part

of the team Access exclusive podcasts, interviews and analysis with a monthly or annual membership. Become a Member

The biggest criticism will be of the collective silence, the lack of challenge. When it comes to questions being raised from the floor, I don’t expect that this year will be any different. While there’s anecdotal evidence of an increase in dissatisfaction with John Delaney and the FAI, especially where finances are concerned, I can’t see that translating into open dissent at the AGM.

Journalists will be incredulous as the delegates — particularly those from League of Ireland clubs — stay quiet. They will become frustrated at the lack of questions, when delegates are the only people entitled to a response. Last year the media submitted a list of questions that have not — a year on — been answered.

The reality is stark. There is no public dissent out of fear or need. To publicly challenge is to put the club, region or committee you represent in a negative light when you are entirely dependent upon favours and scraps from the top table.

However, there is private dissent and many arguments behind closed doors; arguments I’ve been involved in myself as far back as 2009 when a couple of hundred FORAS members were threatening to delay the start of a televised game by a pitch invasion, which brought most of the League’s officials to Cork for crisis talks with troublemakers who would own the club a few short months later.

Source: Donall Farmer/INPHO

One SSE Airtricity League club club tells the story of an AGM where they had a number of questions ready for the ‘any other business’ [AOB] section, only to find an FAI official standing next to them, then delivering a message to the top table which saw the AOB section of the agenda quickly discarded as time had run out.

Criticism of silence aside, the area that the AGM truly fails is in inviting the press to attend, yet at the same time excluding them. Two years ago in Arklow I witnessed the hugely embarrassing scenes as the assembled journalists tried to get close to John Delaney after the formal part of the AGM, only to find their multiple routes to the CEO blocked by FAI security and communications staff.

For 10 minutes journalists and staff played a game of cat and mouse around rows of chairs until it was finally cleared through the announcement that the room was needed for a National Convention meeting.

I was left inside the room, with my fellow National Council members, as journalists were marched out. There’s a large amount of questions that need to be answered and a lot of change that needs to be made.

This year the FAI would be better served leaving the journalists in the room and — for once — allowing questions to be asked.