GROWTH INDUSTRY
Stop the tiresome comparisons with men’s side… Pauw’s Ireland are forging their own path
Ireland’s profile has rocketed as a result of the improvement under Pauw
They are a statement in doing your best and behaving with honour
ONE of the many national delusions we hold dear is that the Irish are uniquely drawn to storytelling. We like to think that no one tells stories like us, that we are blather’s chosen people. Coach-loads of American tourists might swallow that myth, but the power of stories in building and bonding communities is understood all over the world.
This extends to sport, too. Beyond the competitive edge and the virtues so vividly captured by the contest of individuals and teams, sport is enthralling because of stories.
In an environment rendered increasingly sterile by suspicion and control, where managers and coaches and handlers don’t trust their stars to speak in public in any meaningful way, the value of stories is only heightened.
Stories don’t merely humanise athletes, but they elevate their efforts, too. The concept of ordinary people pushing themselves to extraordinary feats becomes clear.
And one of the richest dividends of the progress made by the Irish women’s team is in their story.
We knew, in a general way, the indignities that previous generations endured in the name of Ireland.
The stunning press conference held five years ago this month detailed the disgusting treatment of players by an organisation rotting from the head down, and whose end was only months away.
But it is only since then that their stories have reached wider audiences, and under the inspiring leadership of Vera Pauw, the team has improved to the point where support is growing fast, performances are keeping up, and the profile of the side has rocketed.
With greater exposure comes greater insight, and the stories of players like Niamh Fahey, Chloe Mustaki, and Denise O’Sullivan are receiving bigger, more fitting platforms.
Mustaki spoke brilliantly after the Sweden game about the impact equal pay has had on Ireland’s preparations; she has remained an amateur, splitting her time between a day job and the demands of an elite sport.
But her story has had more acute twists, too, including being diagnosed with cancer in her late teens, and the shuddering blow to her ambitions of a cruciate ligament injury two years ago, when she seemed on the verge of her Ireland bow.
O’Sullivan is a livewire who spoke in recent days of the trauma visited on her club by a sexual misconduct scandal last year.
She is a star for North Carolina Courage in the National Women’s Soccer League in America.
The team’s head coach was sacked last year after reports of his conduct emerged, and O’Sullivan said all she wanted at the end of a wretched season was to return to her family in Cork.
But she never thought of staying away from a club where she has spent the past five years, and where her contribution is highly valued.
That resolution is evident in every game she plays.
Fahey has won 102 caps for Ireland, and played for a decade when the team barely registered in the national consciousness, and when it was subject to degrading treatment by its own association.
She has known more hard days than easy ones over the course of her long career, one would venture, but her perseverance speaks to character and ability. She is only the fourth woman to win 100 caps for the national team.
Her talent was shaped by soccer and Gaelic games: Fahey emulated her older brothers, Gary and Richie, in winning an All-Ireland football title in 2004 when she was just 17, and she was a national champion in soccer three years later.
Fahey was said to be bemused when a big deal was made of her 100th cap, earned against Poland in February, but she is a central figure in a side that is starting to grip a nation.
These stories not only provide more rounded studies of players that are becoming familiar subjects in casual conversation, but they also enrich the wider sporting culture, too.
Think of how accounts of sacrifice made by famous GAA players, golfers and rugby stars are tirelessly recounted.
Tales of improbable resistance and success on an international scale have been lovingly retold from Genoa, Stuttgart and New York.
Wearied debate about how Ireland’s draw with the second-best team in the world last Tuesday night rates against the men beating Italy in a World Cup, or England at Euro 88, aren’t the point.
They are blissfully irrelevant. It is possible to recognise the cultural impact of that win against the English 34 years ago, and the enormous impact it had on Irish people here and all over the world, while also understanding the remarkable progress made by the women’s side since that sombre press conference five years ago.
Great nights don’t have to be in competition, but it is both tiresome and sneaky to set what the women are doing against the past glories of the men.
It is also a lamentable failure of imagination.
For those that cannot savour what Ireland are doing now, under Pauw, are denied the chance to appreciate a group of young people determined to wring the best out of themselves.
They are a study in the virtues we try and impart in classrooms, playgrounds and training fields all over the land. This is the dictums about doing your best, behaving with honour, and never giving up, made flesh.
Challenges remain, and there are tests awaiting the team that could still stymie their World Cup dreams.
After doing what they did in Sweden this week, a failure to qualify would be a terrible shame, and it would also be the chance of a lifetime passed up.
Nobody understands that more clearly than the coach and her players, though.
They visit Georgia at the end of June, where victory will be expected; the Georgians were vaporised 11-0 in Dublin at the end of November.
The group concludes with a testing trip to Slovakia but by then, Ireland could have sealed second place, and so a spot in the play-offs for a World Cup place.
That requires them to beat Finland in Dublin on September 1, a night that promises to be one of the most significant in modern women’s sport in this country.
It is scheduled for Tallaght Stadium, a ground that has become a home for this squad.
But there is a movement pushing for a switch to the Aviva Stadium, as a stage befitting a side that could, on the night, guarantee that play-off position.
Selling out a 50,000-capacity ground could be a challenge, but this is a side with a good story, made up of many individual compelling ones.
Let the FAI promote them further, and capitalise both on an Irish crowd’s willingness to get behind a good story, and the ability of this team to make good on the expectation. Tell their stories. The people will listen.