A wild journey from whistleblower to team CEO
Opening night, Friday Feb. 16, and the realization of a lifelong dream for Ciara McCormack. She’s actually doing the damn thing, running a European soccer club. But here, in Ireland’s third-biggest city, reality has always had a way of catching up with dreams.
So, for the new CEO of Treaty United, North Vancouver born and bred, a dose of Limerick reality arrives, wrapped in shiny plastic. To be absolutely accurate, there aren’t any wrappers left.
“You want to capture the behindthe-scenes reality at Treaty United?” McCormack says. “The home opener, it was around 7 p.m. and someone shouted over, ‘Oh my god, there’s not enough stock in the tuck shop. There’s been a chocolate bar robbery, basically. We have nothing!’
“Everyone is busy. Myself and Marie Curtin, our COO, are the only free hands, so we shoot down to Arthur’s Quay, the shopping centre. (We) sprinted into the dollar store and said, ‘We need every sweet thing you have!’ We cleaned out this dollar store, spent 360 euros (about $530). We put all this chocolate in around the kids’ car seat in the back of Marie’s car and speed back up to the game to stock up the shop. By now it’s almost 7:45 p.m., the game is kicking off and the CEO and COO are zooming into the car park with a car weighed down with chocolate bars and sodas.
“We pulled in and looked at each other and said, ‘Holy s---! There are so many people here’. We actually broke the (attendance) record. It was times three the previous (one). It’s only little moments like that where you finally look up and think, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ ”
It is amazing. Every last bit of it. Treaty United 2024 represents something groundbreaking. Or a lot of things.
The dawn of the next phase of McCormack’s maverick life, becoming the first female CEO in League of Ireland history. Another new chapter for soccer in a place that has had a tortured time with the game. It’s also the beginning of something all too rare: a Canadianowned and run professional European club. Five months after its takeover, Treaty United may be the most Canadian soccer club in Europe.
As they guided their chocolatemobile back to the stadium on opening night, McCormack and Curtin sped up Garryowen Road past St. John’s Cathedral. Walking the same route on a light, bright Tuesday lunchtime a couple of weeks later, the church spire casts a shadow all the way to the gates of Markets Field. For over a century it laid claim to being Ireland’s tallest spire — until it was actually measured. Once the tape came out, they realized it was in fact 13 metres shorter than billed and so a church in Cork took the honour.
Past the stadium’s main gate, a full 12-foot-high wall is given over to a mural of purples and gold with the word “Hope” bursting out off the concrete blocks. Underneath, its message is to “hold on, pain ends” in all caps. The Wall of Hope was a collaboration last spring between University of Limerick students and a community group to “encourage people who are going through a difficult time to reach out and seek support.”
History, myth and reality; darkness, hope and light. All on this three-minute stroll by the home of Limerick soccer. All of it interlocking into the much longer route that brought McCormack and Treaty together.
“At this point in life, it’s already been this crazy journey. I’m a big believer in everything happening for a reason,” McCormack says. “I’m maybe a little bit hippy where I’ll look at my phone and it’s 5:55 or I’ll go to a Starbucks and it costs 7.77 euros but I’m constantly having these affirmations.
“I don’t know where it’s going to lead me. I’m 44, I’ve had enough of life to maybe think that I don’t control all of this. This is where I’m meant to be now. I always dreamed of running a European soccer club. This wild dream. And it’s crazy to see it manifested, particularly off the back of this other wild situation that I came out of.”
That situation is one which McCormack feels out of but Canada is far from it. For years she blew the whistle on abuse and the subsequent coverups within the highest levels of soccer. Eventually, police reopened their investigation into former Vancouver Whitecaps and national youth team coach Bob Birarda, who was sentenced to two years in prison for the sexual assault of former players. McCormack twice brought her campaign for a national public inquiry into abuse in Canadian sport to Parliament Hill, most recently last summer.
By that time, McCormack was already planning her Treaty takeover. She had signed on as a player in 2023 with the club, 13 years after she had played her last game for Ireland’s national team. Born to Irish immigrant parents, at different times in her life her second homeland has been, we suggest, a place of solace? “Refuge!” McCormack responds.
To make this latest refuge mission more of a formal, stable affair she needed backing. McCormack convinced Tricor Pacific Capital, a Vancouver investment firm with zero sports holdings, to help buy Treaty. If they weren’t the most likely purchasers, Treaty wasn’t the most likely asset either.
Limerick is the Treaty City, so named after an accord signed in the late 1600s and swiftly ignored by the British. It is a city that has traversed myriad socio-economic issues and hard times. It has also struggled to sustain a soccer club in recent decades. Hold on, pain ends? Limerick fans may have struggled to believe the words on the wall.
“Often times with takeovers you’ve soccer people who don’t know anything about business or business people who don’t know anything about soccer … and it always fails,” McCormack says. “The due-diligence process, where Tricor was coming into it as a proper corporate entity that has checks and balances and ways of operation, has been so good for us.
“I never in a million years would have thought I’d end up in Limerick but, for what I’m passionate about, I couldn’t have picked a better place. I think maybe five of the 10 poorest neighbourhoods in Ireland are in Limerick and I look at that as an unbelievable opportunity.
“I love the fact that soccer is still accessible here. In the States and in Canada at younger levels, soccer is a rich kids’ sport. Here … you really can go into areas where kids might be in hard situations but high-level soccer is somewhere they can have a chance to live a dream. That’s my true passion: using sport as a positive, uplifting thing.”
When news of the deal broke in October, the immediate reaction in Canada was to reach for Ryan Reynolds and Wrexham comparisons. But this was never going to be an injection of millions. McCormack says she is more about “Moneyball kind of moves, outsmarting the system.”
Her version of sabermetrics has been to lean into weaknesses in Canada’s model. While Project 8 hopes to start a women’s professional competition soon, soon ain’t now. So McCormack has offered her own pathway, signing seven Canadians as part-time pros to Treaty’s women’s team. The whistleblower has become pied piper.
“We didn’t have any pipeline to go into because obviously there’s no pro league (in Canada) yet. So it’s great to have Ciara build this for Canadians coming over,” says defender Kayla Kyle, from Montreal. “We’re really thankful to have her. She’s just great at organizing a bunch of things for us and getting us started.”
Kyle and the other overseas recruits live north of the city in the serene village of Killaloe. Her housemates include Talia White, from Calgary, and goalkeeper Annie-Marie Ulliac, from Edmonton, who is returning for a second season.
“When I heard about Ciara’s plans for the takeover, the investment and opportunities that would create, that’s why I was interested in coming back,” Ulliac says.
McCormack is still active and still watching developments in the fight for accountability in Canadian sport. But she’s not waiting.
“I think it’s a redirection in a really positive way of a lot of negative stuff.” she says. “There is a huge, huge problem in Canadian sport. I feel like I poured my heart fully out in a way that is painful to watch back. I have done every single thing as a person that I could do.
“I’m a big believer in taking action and this feels like a really positive, healthy way to take all that, to create a club that I wish I’d have had. From that perspective it’s such a gift that I’ve been given to take all that awful stuff and create this good vibe thing.”
There is still plenty on McCormack’s to-do list. The five months since the takeover have been dominated by 17-hour days, “a tsunami of things to do,” small miracles, big headaches and local customs getting in the way.
“It’s been so interesting to be here, culturally,” McCormack says with a laugh. “There are so many moments where it’s like … this is my dad everywhere. Just a bunch of older Irish guys telling me it can’t be done and me being, ‘F--- you, let me prove you wrong.’ “
For now at least, she has. The men’s team, fighting for promotion to Ireland’s top tier, stayed undefeated against Cork City in front of a raucous derby crowd Friday night. The women kicked off the season in stellar fashion too. The tuck shop is stocked and McCormack feels ready for whatever comes next.
“It’s like we’re riding this wave … almost like the universe wants us to do well,” she says. “For so many years when all the Birarda stuff was happening, every single thing in my life went wrong. I swear to god, now? Everything is going right.”
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I love the fact that soccer is still accessible here. In the States and in Canada at younger levels, soccer is a rich kids’ sport. Here … you really can go into areas where kids might be in hard situations but high-level soccer is somewhere they can have a chance to live a dream.
CIARA MCCORMACK CEO OF TREATY UNITED