IRELAND’S FIRST APPEARANCE at a women’s World Cup was novel in many ways but it has ended as the last one began, with the manager and captain in open dispute. At least we managed to get the captain on the pitch this time.
This fissure was exposed after Monday’s draw with Nigeria, when, in a trademark tactless flourish, Vera Pauw revealed Katie McCabe had asked for Sinead Farrelly to be substituted with 20 minutes to go McCabe then made it a Liveline Issue by tweeting a zipped-face emoji and hopping on a flight home.
The pair’s lack of discretion escalated a problem that might otherwise have been dismissed as some standard creative tension between the squad’s biggest personalities.
That Pauw mentioned Farrelly’s name needlessly personalised the farrago, but it stems from the persistent question around this Irish team. Should McCabe should be given a more advanced role? Against Nigeria, Farrelly’s job was to drop back and provide cover whenever McCabe pushed on from left wing-back so the more Farrelly tired, the more limited McCabe’s attacking opportunities would be.
McCabe herself told RTÉ ahead of the game that she would like a more attacking role in the team, and she isn’t the only talent feeling cramped by the manager’s game plan. Denise O’Sullivan was liberated to play further forward against Nigeria, and, while toeing a diplomatic line post-game, admitted she enjoyed playing in her “more natural position.”
The World Cup therefore ends with Ireland’s two bona fide world class players both gently bridling at the defensive emphasis put upon their roles, at odds with a manager who betrayed her philosophy in saying that yes, while the Canada game was must-win, the “first part of winning is not losing.”
This draws the terms of reference for the post-mortem. Ireland scored one goal and collected one point at the World Cup, but what might have been achieved had our best players been unleashed? Or was the entire team’s structure found in the manager’s strictures? Would an added attacking impetus have been fatally undermined by defensive collapse?
If you feel you are beginning to recognise this discourse, it is because you do. The debate went mainstream when Eamon Dunphy’s pen took flight in 1990, but Dunphy had been waging the war years earlier, with Eoin Hand the target of much ire.
The interminable half-life of this argument comes from the nature of football itself, which always serves up enough evidence to fit any point of view. This year, for instance, O’Sullivan’s improved performance against Nigeria and McCabe’s barnstorming heroics in chasing the deficit against Canada offered tempting evidence as to what Ireland could achieve if both were freed to play further forward.
Equally, Ireland leaked a series of gilt-edged chances against Canada when they chased the game and the one time McCabe didn’t track Hayley Raso from left wing-back against Australia, it culminated in Marissa Sheva’s clumsy penalty giveaway.
Pick your side and then select your evidence. There’s plenty of it to go around.
Writer The Man in the Black Pyjamas pithily diagnosed our general state of being.
“Pauw probably gone”, he tweeted on Monday, “but as a football nation we are at our best when we are straining to break out of a defensive system enforced by a single minded coach, imagining that we could play expansive football if we were let.”
There is a profound truth in this. It seems we are happiest when we have drably achieved something notable, and can then tell ourselves we could achieve even more if only we could convince an outside manager of our shamefully quashed native flair.
This debate has always attracted wider resonance by being cast as a clash between optimists versus pessimists; a dramatisation of the differing worldviews between those who aspire to self-determination and the begrudgers, deathlessly defined by Brendan O’ hEithir as being a people governed at all times by a deep and abiding doubt of their ability to run their own affairs as well as others might on their behalf.
There is nothing wrong with having this debate, but it is foolish to filter it entirely through the figure of the international manager.
The senior manager might be able to do more but they can ultimately only do so much. Stephen Kenny, for instance, has spent much of his time as men’s manager negotiating a middle ground between his ambitions and the quality of his midfielders. It was no coincidence, meanwhile, that the bulk of Pauw’s pre-tournament recruits were attackers.
Identity, style, and principles of play should be decided by the players’ at a manager’s disposal, and the type and quality of those players should be a product of a coherent underage structure. Ireland, plainly, has never had this, for all the discrete heroics of coaches and volunteers.
Former FAI director of football Ruud Dokter stitched together a more-joined approach among the national underage managers, but too many of his ideas didn’t travel well outside of Abbottstown. Things may change under his successor Marc Canham, but his boldest visions will be held back by the chronic lack of investment in coaching and facilities. Ireland, for instance, averages between zero and one full-time academy coach per top-division club. The European average is seven times that.
It is in the funding and strategic direction of underage football pathways where debates about philosophy and principles of play can be most effective. But it’s a whole lot easier to centre it on the figure of the senior manager instead.
The general level of top-level coaching to which our players have access lags terribly behind the rest of Europe, and until that changes, we will be having these same arguments in 15 years time.
The debate as to whether or not we have been held back by Vera Paw’s good-faith pragmatism will rage on. It seems, however, that it will bring her no further.