HAPPY WORLD CUP Eve, everybody.
Ross Whitaker’s RTÉ documentary The Road Down Under was the perfect preview act: it’s always useful to remind ourselves of how something so significant was achieved, but in the case of this Irish team, it’s a necessary act of narrative.
Their steep, winding road to the World Cup hasn’t really been given adequate airing in the last couple of weeks, with the build-up overshadowed by adjacent stories and controversies. The last week was dominated by the injury scare for Denise O’Sullivan and the curiously secretive veil drawn across Colombian skulduggery; the week before that saw Vera Pauw answering questions once again about her bitterly contested experience at Houston Dash, as the Athletic reheated the allegations made in last December’s report by the National Women’s Soccer League.
This is nothing new for this group of players, however, given they qualified for the World Cup and then spent the following days forced to swallow the bloviating of English presenters and pundits in response to their foolish singing of Celtic Symphony in the dressing room.
The RTÉ documentary rightly address that sorry episode – everyone’s apologies are authentic – but is also redresses the balance, telling the full prologue to this epic tale.
There is time given to one of the most extraordinary stories along the way, when Pauw disclosed last year that she was raped as a young player in the Netherlands.
“I did as there was no other way”, she says of her decision to go public 30 years on. “I could have killed myself, but I wasn’t going to do that. I had to create space for myself, I had to create freedom.” She grows emotional in recalling the “warmth and love” of the Irish reaction.
“People in Ireland can’t imagine what they have done for me”, says Pauw. “I hope I can give that little bit back.”
The sporting arc is neatly drawn. The defiance at Liberty Hall is naturally included but it is ordered after the heartbreak of missing out on qualification of the European Championships, as Ireland contrived to lose on the final day of qualifying away to Ukraine. They needed merely to draw to go to a play-off, but a combination of Aine O’Gorman’s own goal and Katie McCabe’s missed penalty condemned Ireland to a crushing 1-0 defeat.
It’s here we realise just how Ireland were encumbered by their own nerves. Katie McCabe says the Ireland players were not used to playing under that kind of pressure; Louise Quinn remembers not wanting to tell anyone about her level of nervous energy. It manifested itself in decision-making off the pitch, as McCabe – for reasons she still can’t quite understand – deviated from her regular penalty-taking routine and ended up smashing the crossbar.
“I can still hear the bar rattling”, she sighs.
Courtney Brosnan eloquently captures the own goal, which happened when O’Gorman steered a back-pass too far right of Brosnan but not so far right that it missed the net.
“As soon as the ball came off Aine’s foot…oh shit.”
Pauw explains that Ireland were so much better than Ukraine that the result almost defied logic, other than the fact that it was a final, and, as she says, “you must learn how to play a final”, and thus not allow yourself to do anything differently. At the point she says that this is the reason most teams lose the very first final in which they appear, you realise that it may have been a necessary heartbreak for her players. It drove them to the World Cup – McCabe’s first words post-game were that this nightmare would drive them to the greatest dream of all – and they made good on their word.
There were so many tiny, accumulating moments along the way: blocks and challenges and goal-line clearances and second balls won rather than lost, and there are a couple revealed around the play-off against Scotland. McCabe recalls seeing Brosnan studying clips of Caroline Weir’s penalties on the bus to Hampden Park, while Amber Barrett remembers a voice shouting from the bench, “Do it for Donegal” as she ran on to the pitch. Those words didn’t leave her head, even though it was filled with the headiest kind of energy after scoring the goal that ultimately secured a spot in Oz.
The significance of qualification will be celebrated tomorrow but felt in 15 years, when the Irish team is stocked with players who started playing football because they were off school to watch the Irish team play Australia at the Women’s World Cup.
This story won’t end this month, but it’s good to remind ourselves how it all began.
