Noel Mooney: 'Tough decisions' will be made, says FAW chief executive

Football Association of Wales (FAW) chief executive Noel Mooney says he is ready to make some "tough decisions" in his new role.

Mooney took up his post in August and replaced Jonathan Ford, who left the association following a vote of no confidence in March.

The 44-year-old Irishman accepts not everyone will appreciate the changes he seeks to make to Welsh football.

"I don't expect to be very popular " Mooney said.

"We'll have to make decisions with our board and our council that don't keep everyone happy.

"Unfortunately you can't keep every one happy but what you can do is that there are zero hidden agendas - we just want to see the game reach its full potential.

"There will be tough decisions to make in the next couple of years in particular."

Mooney spent 10 years with European football's governing body Uefa, most recently as head of national associations business development, having previously held roles in marketing after joining from the Football Association of Ireland.

"The way I look at it is that I'll be here for five or six years and in the first couple of years it's about aligning everything, making sure that we're fit to deliver what we are going to do," Mooney added.

"Then in a couple of years after that we will reap the success, which is qualifying for all tournaments and not just a big success when we get there.

"That takes a lot of leadership and big decisions to make sure we have the ability to do that."

The FAW will launch its Our Wales strategy next week which will lay out the roadmap for Welsh football for the next six years, which Mooney said will detail player development.

A review of football in Wales, Sustainable Association of the Future, looking at how the game is structured is also in the pipeline and which Mooney hopes will allow the game to reach its "full potential".

"I couldn't be more excited about the future of Welsh football," Mooney said in an interview with BBC Sport Wales.

"Yes, there will be challenges from contemporary live issues that are in my in-tray right now to the bigger strategic issues that will take a lot of buy-in.

"Building our relationships with big stakeholders like the Welsh Government, Sport Wales and local authorities is very much a part of my own agenda with the board.

"We must be great, trusted partners with our stakeholders and that's something that's really important to us to allow us to reach our full potential.

"There's a lot there, but we've got good people around us."

Mooney was a goalkeeper with Limerick, Cork City and Shamrock Rovers in the League of Ireland and has also worked with the FAI.

He believes Wales' domestic game can learn a lot from his native country and said "everything is on the table" with regard the top-flight Cymru Premier, including a much-debated switch to summer football.

"I have a lot of experience from Ireland with the league there and it was clear to me that there were some clubs that adapted better than others to connecting with communities, to facilities to building their brands," Mooney added.

"If you look in Ireland there's Bohemians. When I first met them they were in dire straits and now they sell out and [are] going to a new state-of-the-art stadium that's being built and will sell out there.

"It's because they connected with the locality, built a brand that's really attractive to the people of the area. Sligo did similar and are very much the centre of the community.

"What we've got to do is to have a big plan for the league and each of the clubs have to have their own plans which fit into that and I've no doubt the Cymru Premier will be much stronger in five or six years' time.

"But we need partners with us so we need for example the broadcasters, the commercial partners, the [Welsh] Government and Sport Wales to believe in the Cymru Premier division.

"We need to have a strong, thriving domestic championship and that's really important. It's often seen as a barometer of the strength of football in the country.

"We are in a geographically unusual spot in Europe - even in Ireland they have water between them and the biggest league in the world.

"We can literally drive a few kilometres and we're going to the biggest league on the planet that everybody wants to be part of.

"That said it's great because it drives interest in football generally in Wales, but our duty at the FAW is to support our clubs to grow here and we will be developing a plan with the clubs."

In the build up to Wales' opening Women's World Cup qualifier against Kazakhstan, Mooney has met with staff and members of the senior squad.

He said women' and girls football was a huge growth market and that he was confident the game in Wales would be much stronger by the time he left his role.

"The support for girls' football in Wales has grown dramatically in the last period and that will continue to grow," Mooney said.

"We'll launch the Women's and Girl's strategy very soon and what you'll see in that is new agreements with the women's senior team and also a new agreement really with the whole of Welsh women's football - a commitment to invest in grassroots, youth national teams etc.

"Equality comes in lots of different forms - it comes from having the same support, the same conditions and sometimes more.

"A lot of our men's team for example would have their own endorsements and boot deals whereas the women's team won't so the FAW would cover things for the women's teams we wouldn't for the men's teams.

"What I will say is that the agreements we've formed with the women and girls teams are some of the best I've seen in Europe.

"Our investment as a percentage of our turnover in women and girls football is really strong. I'm really happy we are in a good position with the women and girls game in Wales."

Mooney has also spent time since arriving in Wales visiting grassroots clubs and said: "The love for football is there, the demand for football is clearly there - it's everywhere," he said.

"But we need to get pitches built, really good quality pitches, in these grassroots clubs.

"We have limited resources here, but we need to be more flexible, more agile and box cleverer than everybody else, like our players do on the field.

"We have to work harder and smarter than everybody else off the field.

"We are well placed to become one of the best football federations in Europe and my experience in Uefa over the last 10 years leading the strategic developments of the national associations allows me a confidence so say that we can do that.

"But it will take a lot of work and a lot of change management in how we do things and a lot of realignment."