It’s confirmed – Minister for Sport John O’Donoghue has stuck his big nose into Merrion Square and told the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) how to run its business post-Fran Rooney.

Now the rank and file of the FAI want to tell the government to stick their interference where the floodlights don’t shine but can’t.

Instead they have agreed to advertise for a new CEO and director of finance by the start of the New Year, just as the bully boys in the government asked them to do.

It galls me that the FAI are now kowtowing to the politicians and allowing the government to dictate how they do their business and how they elect Rooney’s successor.

O’Donoghue and all those other whingers in government were — correct me if I’m wrong here — elected by the people of this country to serve this country. Not the other way around.

Nobody gave O’Donoghue or any other minister the right to serve in cabinet except the voters, the people who put him there.

He wasn’t born with the right to lead. He didn’t win it in a raffle. He didn’t just walk into the Dail (Parliament) one day and say, “Hey Bertie I want to be the minister for sport because I’m the best man for the job.”

No sir, John O’Donoghue is the minister for sport because you and I put him there. He earns a six-figure salary and a wad of expenses because I and thousands like me pay our taxes each and every week.

He is in office to do what is best for the people of Ireland, the people who elected him. We are not here to do what is best for O’Donoghue, nor is the Football Association of Ireland in existence merely to do what the government wants.

When the government talks about withholding money from Irish football, when O’Donoghue talks of freezing funds to the FAI, he is not talking about money from his own pocket.

He is talking about state funds, the majority of which have come through taxes, the sort of taxes that every football fan and every football player and every football administrator pays directly and non-directly each and every single week.

The politicians are, I am afraid, losing the run of themselves on this one. Their bully boy tactics may sound impressive in the Dail bar, but they really should remember who they represent, not what they want to represent. 

The last time I checked more people played association football in one weekend than voted for O’Donoghue down in his Kerry constituency.

That is an important point to remember here before this government goes completely potty as regards Irish soccer and imposes their slavery to a Genesis report that should now be put to the shredder.

Irish football doesn’t tell Bertie Ahern how to run the country, and he really shouldn’t tell those voted into office by the grassroots of the game here how to run their game.

And I couldn’t care less if he now withdraws funding from the game, if he lives up to the threat of a schoolyard bully.

Irish soccer survived for long enough without any funding from government and will do so again. Can O’Donoghue’s government survive without the votes of the football community? I doubt it.

They should remember that the next time they throw their considerable weight around Merrion Square.