A volley of dirty shots, including claims of false invoicing, bullying and vicious infighting, littered the court at one of the nation’s most loved sports.

Outside of the big four — soccer, rugby, Gaelic football and hurling – tennis is the leading individual sport in the affections of the Irish public.

According to a study by Teneo earlier this year, Tennis is more popular than golf and athletics (tied sixth), horseracing, cycling and boxing amongst sports fans aged over 18 years.

The survey found that while 4% of all adults play the sport, more than one fifth of the public enjoyed or ‘like’ tennis, with those figures set to rise considerably over the course of the next 10 days as Wimbledon provides its traditional summer backdrop.

As SW19 basks in the glow of global attention, Tennis Ireland is getting used to its own warm front following a landmark ruling by the organisation last month when it voted to reform the Board.

Last February this column said that for any real change to be effective at TI it needed to move from 15 to 10 Board members, and indeed it has done just that.

Now the Board is made up of five regionals and five independent directors, immediately reducing the power of the provincial factions to a ruling committee which can now work together without blockage or interruption.

The 100-10 vote in favour of Board reform last month happily coincided with the end of the first three months of leadership at Tennis Ireland by Kevin Quinn, the former Leinster Rugby marketing and commercial director.

While the new CEO readily admits that the process of restructuring governance at TI was up and running before he arrived, the deal still needed to be done and so the ex-rugby executive has now a clear mandate to bring effective change to the business.

In an interview with The Pitch, Quinn agrees that taking on such a role coming from one of Irish sport’s most successful brands with Leinster was always going to be risky.

His predecessor Richard Fahey left the organisation after he made deeply troubling discoveries concerning secret payments to a coach approved privately by a Board member – and so, this was and perhaps still is, a step into the unknown.

“There was always going to be risk there, you couldn’t have any clear-cut guarantees (going into the job),” Quinn explained.

“There was no assurance that everything (in governance restructure) was going to happen – but there definitely was a risk - to be honest, the risk was always there but was attractive too in terms of a challenge.

“I felt though, that it had reached a point where people had said: ‘Enough of this – we must move on for tennis.’” 

Within three weeks and while embarking on a meet and greet of clubs and branches, Quinn said he could see “quite plainly” the difficulties in reforming such a large and traditional organisation.

“Some (challenges) were more significant than I thought, but if I could get the clubs and the branches aligned first, and with the governance renewal and a reduction in the size of the board that would allow us to have a platform.” 

The 15-member board had been controlled by a majority of regional directors – three from Leinster, two from Munster and Ulster and one from Connacht – and once they could be convinced that they needed to be in the minority, only then could change come.

So what was the key in getting the officials to decrease their own power to an equal level with a newly appointed suite of independents making up a ‘five-and-five’ membership?

“It was challenging in some aspects, but to most of those around the table, this made the most sense,” he adds.

Leinster with two directors still holds the most representative power, holding almost half of all tennis clubs and 65% of affiliated members and players.

So is Leinster still a dominant influence? “No is the answer to that, but realistically speaking with five independent portfolio directors and with the three other branches they can be out-voted quite significantly.” 

The next step for Quinn is to drive through his and the organisation’s strategic plan which he is working on through the summer and which will feature five pillar objectives - focusing keenly on greater access to facilities and increased participation.

Up to 500 courts which are currently unattached to clubs are being examined (with councils, schools and others) for redevelopment under the TI umbrella.

Currently, there are 80,000 registered members in tennis clubs with up to 120,000 more playing, numbers which Tennis Ireland are confident will grow.

Amid all of the governance and structural change at Tennis Ireland there is the business itself — one of the reasons Quinn was brought in was due to his commercial clout and success with Leinster.

Conversations are taking place with a merchandising partner, as well as others with sponsors to drive the sport past its current revenue standard which was reported in its latest set of financial figures as €150k (Wilson and AIG), with a recorded income of €2.4m.

Next week Kevin Quinn will be at Wimbledon, where he will hear from the Lawn Tennis Association and the International Tennis Federation about how they grow the game.

They, in turn, will hear about one of the most remarkable comebacks from an organisation which was only recently on the brink of breaking point.

Noel Kelly set to retain paddy power portfolio 

NOEL KELLY has not just been the most dominant force in RTÉ in recent years – indeed his portfolio network within the sports industry is significant.

The controversial dealmaker and agent at the heart of the Ryan Tubridy payments controversy is a central figure within the Paddy Power organisation where his influence and value is channelled through his CMS Marketing business.

An AIB account belonging to CMS Marketing was used to receive payments worth €150,000 from RTÉ to Ryan Tubridy, part of €345,000 in fees which Mr Kelly is believed to have organised with the network for the former Late Late Show presenter.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said last week that he suspected that some of the RTÉ payments were “on the wrong side of the law”.

It is likely that Noel Kelly – who is also agent to Donncha O’Callaghan and Niall Quinn - will tell various Dáil Committees next week that he did nothing wrong.

Sources at Paddy Power have told The Pitch that while it is watching the saga unfold and will continue to review Noel Kelly’s involvement in the payment issue, but for now it has no plans to end its arrangement with the agent.

CMS Marketing has been central to a series of high-profile Paddy Power campaigns in recent years including its Cheltenham and Punchestown activations.

What will be of most interest to PP will be how Kelly performs at Oireachtas committee level next week, and how he comes out of the ordeal politically.

Paddy Power, along with its parent company Flutter, are tentatively awaiting political intervention across the betting sector with the arrival of legislation to introduce Gambling Regulation in the coming months.

The bookie will be keen not to attract any further negativity towards the business or any of its stakeholders from politics, as a wave of political momentum looks determined to introduce significant changes to the industry.

One of CMS Marketing’s most recent campaigns was the promotion of the firm’s ‘Laugh Your Pants Off’ activation for the Paddy Power Comedy Festival – for Noel Kelly and his clients, next week will see some. 

Irish Racing strengthens ties with Bahrain turf club 

HORSERACING Ireland has announced new racing fixtures for Leopardstown Racecourse with the announcement of the Dublin to Bahrain series.

The series builds on the Bahraini sponsorship of the Royal Bahrain Irish Champion Stakes (Group 1), and will begin on July 20 where it will feature five races where the winners will be eligible for the Bahrain Turf Series which targets some of the top 100 international horses.

Tim Husbands, CEO of Leopardstown said that he hoped “that trainers and owners from all over Ireland will target these races and we will look forward to following the winners’ progress in (Bahrain) later in the year”.

The Bahrain Turf Series, a valuable ten-race programme, runs from December to February and caters for both sprint and middle-distance horses.