There’s plenty to admire about Pauw and Co
TIME AND AGAIN IRELAND’S FOOTBALLERS HAVE SHOWN THEIR MORAL COURAGE
GAUGED ON performances, the past year has been a trying one for the Irish women’s football team. Defeat to Sweden on Thursday night did not lack for gallantry or effort, and the manner in which Ireland troubled one of the premier sides in the game was inspiring at times.
But the result did nothing to soften the challenge of qualifying for the World Cup in 2023.
However, Vera Pauw’s side have been making an increasingly impressive impression in their contributions to the wider issues dominating women’s soccer, and women’s sport generally.
Reports of Pauw’s powerful press conference last week described an experienced, highlevel professional plainly addressing issues whose importance go way beyond the field of play.
This was not the stuff of conventional appearances by managers before the media, the boilerplate media diet of injuries, talking up opponents and taking swipes at critics.
Instead, Pauw was speaking in the aftermath of a major scandal breaking in women’s soccer in the United States.
A man called Paul Riley, head coach of the North Carolina Courage, had his contract terminated at the end of September following an investigation by the website The Athletic.
It claimed that in more than a dozen interviews with players from every club Riley had coached since 2010, stories of sexual coercion and a deeply dysfunctional environment emerged.
Riley was one of the most successful coaches in the US, the great force in women’s soccer. He had won the National Women’s Soccer League twice as a head coach, and was twice the league’s coach of the year.
This was a big name in the sport’s most powerful country, losing his job after player after player emerged to share shocking allegations. Riley denied most of them, but the story has demanded attention around the world.
And it reached an Irish women’s press conference where Vera Pauw, a veteran who is managing her fifth international side, was asked about it.
Pauw’s comments were straight and chilling. ‘It is a problem all over the world and it happens on a daily basis,’ she said simply.
It seems reasonable to suppose, too, that it happens in sports other than soccer.
And aspects of the Riley story also expose potential risks for other sports, as they try to break into more mainstream attention.
The investigation by The Athletic that exposed Riley highlighted the silence that has pervaded women’s soccer in the US as it struggled to establish itself on a more consistent basis.
In light of those efforts, a culture emerged where controversy was discouraged because it was seen as bad for the brand.
The National Women’s Soccer League is the third attempt to launch a professional women’s league in the
US. It is now in its ninth year and it continues to struggle, with most players on extremely modest salaries. That precarious status, and the desperate efforts to strengthen it, may have inadvertently contributed to a grossly unhealthy environment. Alex Morgan, one of the stars of the brilliant US national side, put it well. ‘There definitely has been this shared idea that because two leagues have folded in the past, the NWSL is kind of the last hope for a women’s soccer league. ‘Because of that, I feel like there’s this idea that we should be grateful for what we have and we shouldn’t raise important questions, or ask questions at all.’ Any culture where questioning is discouraged quickly grows stale before turning putrid, and the revelations published by The Athletic have finally exposed the one in North Carolina to the outside world. Two of Pauw’s players, Denise
O’Sullivan and Diane Caldwell, play with North Carolina Courage and while there is no indication they were the victims of any inappropriate conduct, their well-being was a priority that was also addressed by Vera Pauw.
Her captain, Katie McCabe, spoke cogently earlier this week about what had emerged, and also revealed the support she had received within the Ireland camp but also at her club, Arsenal.
This was an indication of how profoundly these allegations have affected players.
The story, as Pauw’s comments also indicated, brought home to many women in sport issues around coercion and control, and attitudes that in some places run deep and damaging. While this is a topic that has demanded global attention, it is not the first example of an impressive intervention by Ireland’s women footballers.
In 2017, they sounded an early alarm about the rot that was eating into the FAI when holding a remarkable press conference and revealing stories of teams sharing tracksuits and players being required to change in toilets on occasion.
It would be another two years before the John Delaney empire crumbled, and the man running Irish soccer seemed all-powerful on the day the players called their press briefing and shamed him and the organisation he controlled with what they had to say.
This was a controversy that not even John Delaney could evade, and some improvements were gained for the women’s team.
But that a group playing in largely unheralded matches — one which enjoyed nothing like the profile of the men’s side — decided to stand up for themselves and declare that accepted practice was no longer good enough, was the real story.
It spoke to their gumption and their courage, and it started a process that ended in the historic agreement announced at the end of August, whereby the women’s and men’s team now receive equal match fees.
That deal required the men’s team to agree to reducing their fees, and their readiness to do so reflected well on them.
But it also illustrated the definite shifts in culture, with the importance of the women’s side and their right to compete and represent their country as much as any other side now more widely understood.
As well as being ready to campaign and stand up for themselves, and to recognise the magnitude of the North Carolina story, the Irish team remain driven by familiar competitive urges, too.
They want to succeed, and came closer than many expected to qualifying for next year’s Euros, before their efforts ran out of goals and inspiration.
Pauw acknowledged before Thursday’s game that Ireland were competing for second place in the table, given the presence of the awesome Swedes in their group.
After what happened in Tallaght Stadium, that ambition should be fortified.
Ireland’s hopes will hinge to a significant extent on how they compete in Finland next week, presuming Georgia and Slovakia are the bottom two sides at the end of play; Ireland host both of those sides in Dublin at the end of next month, before next year involves away trips to Sweden, Georgia, and Slovakia, interspersed by the return of the Finns to Dublin.
It is a steep challenge, but this week’s result supports their hopes in that direction.
But there is a value to this group, and to the woman who leads them, beyond matches, goals and qualification points.
Their importance shouldn’t be lightly regarded.
It’s reasonable to suppose it happens in other sports