Striker switches from football to ballroom to honour teammates
Stephanie Roche bids to pay tribute to all the Girls in Green, past and present, on the DWTS f loor tonight
SOCCER star and dance hopeful Stephanie Roche has spoken about her role in the seminal women’s team revolt – an event she says laid the groundwork for the current Irish side’s World Cup heroics.
The 33-year-old will dance contemporary ballroom in honour of her Ireland teammates past and present in tonight’s ‘Dedicated Dance’ on Dancing With The Stars.
She also nods to ‘the volunteers and people who went before and put the work in when no one cared’.
She told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘Obviously the girls qualifying for the World Cup this year has been brilliant. But I feel like it’s important to mention the people who went before us because they paved the way for this to happen.’
When the Girls in Green threatened strike action in 2017 over shameful treatment by the FAI that included being asked to change for matches in public toilets and not being allowed to keep tracksuits, Roche says there ‘was almost an attitude that [as a female athlete] you should be happy playing for your country, shut up. That kind of
‘The women’s team was like an afterthought’
“get in your box” type of thing’.
The women’s team had been ‘almost like an afterthought’, Roche said, before detailing a particular gripe that ‘always played on my mind’.
‘Whenever there was a kit launch for the FAI, I always remember you’d have the male players and then you’d have female models. I‘d be looking at it going, “Why would they not just get Emma Byrne, the [former] captain of the women’s Irish team?”’
The second-class treatment was so normalised that Roche says the team feared a backlash before the press conference in which they announced the proposed strike.
‘We were all like, “Jesus, I hope they don’t think we’re divas”. We were kind of thinking “Are we bringing attention on ourselves here to get crucified?”’
Roche said the unqualified public support was ‘a breath of fresh air’, and the team’s united stand prompted a complete reassessment of the women’s game here, culminating in their successful qualification for this summer’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
After securing most of her 58 caps in the earlier years of her career, Roche is a hopeful outside bet for a place in Vera Pauw’s squad. But she said she will be
there ‘as a fan’ and likely as a pundit for RTÉ if not as a player. She believes the team can get out of a ‘tough group’ and have done enough in qualifying to play without the weight of expectation.
‘I think, “Go in with no pressure on, take the shackles off and just go for it”,’ she said.
Roche is also preparing to go for it in a personal capacity tonight as she lines out in the next stage of the TV dance show.
And she is appealing for more constructive feedback and ‘fair and comparable’ judging.
The football ace has received a number of puzzlingly low scores during the celebrity dance-off series and feels the judging panel’s comments on her performance last week were ‘all negativity’.
She said the judges, ‘didn’t really give me anything to work on’.
The Shamrock Rover had more complimentary words for her fellow contestants, and she revealed a perhaps unlikely ‘party animal’ had emerged during their after-show nights out. ‘It’s a long day on Sunday and obviously there’s the buildup all week, so most of us don’t last too long,’ she admitted. ‘But I think [former State pathologist, Dr] Marie Cassidy was keeping the party going when she was still in. She was the party animal. All the young ones were going home.’
Dancing With The Stars returns on RTÉ One this evening at 6.30pm.