IRELAND CAN’T DROP BALL AS NEW ERA DAWNS
After dispensing with Pauw, FAI has a big call to make
EVERYONE now gets the chance to move on. The rights and wrongs of the messy end to Vera Pauw’s successful time in charge have been endlessly debated. But in the coming days, the Dutchwoman will become part of the past in Irish football as the FAI’s ‘fresh and different’ approach for the women’s team begins.
The Ireland squad meet up for the first time since the Women’s World Cup tomorrow. There are some players, including captain Katie McCabe, who have been put forward for media duty this week. It will be interesting to hear their take on the former manager’s exit.
But, of much more significance in the long-term, is Saturday’s game against Northern Ireland. It will be a landmark occasion, with the women’s team playing at Lansdowne Road for the first time. The FAI is hoping for a crowd of around 30,000, but there hasn’t been much of a promotional blitz, perhaps understandable given the controversy of recent weeks. Even the traditional press conference that coincides with a squad announcement was shelved.
Of course, that may have had something to do with the make-up of the squad. One name leapt out of the 25 that were on the FAI press release on Friday afternoon. Tyler
The players’ take on Pauw exit will be interesting
Toland. The young box-to-box midfielder from Donegal who at 16, was the youngest senior Ireland international but spent four years out in the cold after a very public falling out with Pauw.
Toland’s inclusion heralds the sort of brave new era the FAI wants to introduce. And it will hope for other things to happen in the Aviva on Saturday. They need a sizeable crowd, it was FAI chief executive Jonathan Hill who suggested 30,000 at last Thursday’s press conference. The FAI will hope for those who come to be entertained as style of play was one of the issues with the previous manager. And it will need a convincing Ireland win so the team can move on from the most successful women’s manager in the history of Irish football.
Eileen Gleeson is in temporary charge, with Emma Byrne and Colin Healy as part of her coaching staff. The Dubliner is well-qualified for the role and knows the players, but it is believed that she has little interest in taking the reins full-time, preferring to focus her energies into her job as head of women’s and girls’ football for the FAI.
FAI director of football Marc Canham, who is heading up the search for the new boss, hopes the process will be completed within the Nations League window – Ireland’s final game will be against Northern Ireland in Belfast at the start of December.
Canham insists the search began as soon as Pauw was informed her contract was not being renewed.
But given the speculation around her future hung over the World Cup camp in Australia, it would be hoped that the FAI had already drawn up a list of prospective replacements before that deed was done.
Names such as Liverpool manager Matt Beard, former Ireland international Alan Mahon, currently on the coaching staff of Manchester City, and former Manchester
United boss Casey Stoney have all been mentioned. But Canham insists they are only at the start of a process, giving themselves two months to get a new manager into place.
‘We are looking at a global search, far across the women’s game, over the next couple of weeks it will become clearer who those candidates might be. It wouldn’t be right for me to share those names here and now,’ he said.
While Canham and Hill, as chief executive, head up the search, he admitted that players will be keep informed of how it plays out.
‘We as the executive take absolute leadership and ownership over that process, we have an open dialogue with players in terms of what that looks like, so regular communications with the players and the staff. We have a clear view of what we would like that to be and players have fed back as part of the process of things they would like to see in the future, not specifically around the head coach but things that they would like to see, so we are clear on that.’
The time-frame is interesting, especially in the context of next week’s opponents. The Irish FA took their time after Kenny Shiels stepped away from the Northern Ireland hot-seat in January and it was seven months before Tanya Oxtoby, who has worked as Emma Hayes’ assistant in Chelsea, was appointed. Similarly when Colin Bell left the role back in 2019, it took ten weeks for the FAI to find his successor in Pauw, although that was down to her initial reluctance to take the job.
However, having dispensed with the services of a manager who was wildly popular with the Irish public, all eyes will be on the FAI to make the right appointment. Having got rid of one of only three managers to bring an Ireland side to a World Cup, there will be very little leeway among the public. This is not an appointment that the associaion can afford to mess up.
Breaking the silence on Pauw’s departure was a welcome development last Thursday and perhaps tellingly, there was a suggestion that the Dutchwoman wasn’t going to ‘change’ her approach – and given that she just brought Ireland to their first major tournament, there is an argument as to why would she do that?
But this team is stacked with topclass talent who are part of highperforming professional set-ups at club level.
If they feel that those same standards aren’t being replicated at international level, they will speak up. And now, they know that their concerns will be heard.
Still, the team will need to put a bit of a show for the Irish public next Saturday, simply to ensure all the goodwill from the World Cup is not lost. More significantly, it will also stop people from wondering if moving on from Pauw was the right decision.
Whether it was or not, that is what the FAI has decided. Its brave new era starts on Saturday. Everyone will be watching closely.
The Irish team need to put on a show at Aviva Stadium
UEFA Women’s Nations League: Ireland v Northern Ireland, Aviva Stadium, Saturday (1pm), TV: Live RTÉ 2.