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FAI coaching allegations: There is no resolution to this story, no happily ever afters. Careers were stalled, trauma inflicted

The women say their coaches, in positions of power, reached past the young players’ newfound freedom, touching them as if their wants didn’t matter, as if they didn’t matter

The brave women have told the country what happens without proper guidance and governance, and held the FAI accountable for regarding women as an afterthought. Photograph: Stock Dealer/Agency Photos
The brave women have told the country what happens without proper guidance and governance, and held the FAI accountable for regarding women as an afterthought. Photograph: Stock Dealer/Agency Photos
Louise Lawless
Sat Jul 13 2024 - 06:18

Imagine this: you are young, talented and hardworking. An opportunity has presented itself for career growth, and you’re determined to put your best foot forward. There’s someone who can help, he’s in the business a long time, experienced and powerful. If you listen to him, he’ll get you there. He is the gatekeeper to the dream.

And then, a situation arises where you are alone with him outside of your usual stamping grounds.

Whether the man is a film producer, a chief executive or a football coach, the pattern is the same: a senior man gatekeeping a girl or young woman progressing, blocking the way unless she tolerates his unwanted sexual advances.

The first women’s FÁS/LFAI programme took place over nine months in 1996, and five of the 20 participants, along with some former international players, allege that some of their coaches were sexually inappropriate. These findings are from a two-year long investigation by Marie Crowe of RTÉ and Mark Tighe of the Sunday Independent.

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While stories of misconduct are becoming numbingly familiar, the alleged incidents reported are jarring – ranging from the uncomfortable, such as coaches joining players in the sauna, to the unacceptable, like the anonymised player who was allegedly propositioned in the changing rooms by a coach who told her to clean up his mess after he ejaculated.

During the course, the players were living in a way that felt empowering. They were at the forefront of women’s soccer in Ireland. Some were newly out or realising they were lesbians. The women say their coaches, in positions of power, reached past all that, touching them as if their wants didn’t matter, as if they didn’t matter. No longer “you”, just a body, a vessel for their pleasure, something small they can step on to feel bigger.

In hindsight, there were warning signs, the players say: an over-familiarity, crude remarks, too much drinking together.

That, of course, is the problem. It’s only in hindsight that they realised it shouldn’t have happened. They were on a training course to be better players or eventually coaches but there was nothing in the course about boundaries between coaches and players.

Without a clear, explicit policy and reporting structure from the LFAI, the women – newly enveloped into the fold – interpreted that this experience wasn’t unusual but par for the course, continuing the institutional silence. As Bernard O’Byrne, FAI chief executive from 1996 to 2001, said on the programme “our [safeguarding] structure at that time, I won’t say it wasn’t good, it was non-existent”.

All allegations of sexual misconduct have been strenuously denied. The FAI has apologised unreservedly. “We are sorry for what you had to endure, we’re sorry that anyone could have ever felt unsafe,” interim chief executive David Courell said through reporters earlier this week.

“We are sorry that the modern practises and reporting structures that we now have in place were not there for you when you needed them. And we’re sorry that anyone could have ever felt unsafe in Irish football.”

The FAI is able to apologise 30 years on, somewhat indemnified by the fact that girls and women were an afterthought at the time. They were “ladies”, exiled to a separate governing body, the Ladies FAI, a voluntary organisation with no professional support from the FAI until the 2000s. There is a distance, an urge to relegate this type of behaviour to anecdotal history.

And yet, the problem isn’t restricted to Ireland or even the past.

In 2021 Sinéad Farrelly, capped for Ireland eight times, went public with her experiences of being sexually assaulted and coerced by her former coach Paul Riley during her time at Portland Thorns in the NWSL. (Riley is banned from coaching soccer in the US, along with three other coaches.)

For the past 30 years, the players have held these individual truths. Now, at least, they can hopefully feel lighter, unburdened of a shame that was never theirs to carry

More recently, in 2023 it was Luis Rubiales, the then-president of the Spanish football federation, who took the headlines from the World Cup-winning Spanish football team when he kissed Jenni Hermoso on the mouth on stage after presenting her medal. He felt he could, so he did, likely not expecting international outrage or a criminal case of sexual assault and coercion against him. (He resigned in September 2023, despite initial support from Spanish soccer.)

Despite the apology, the FAI still has work to do.

This is the same FAI which refused to engage with the women for two years before 2017, when the women’s team – including current captain Katie McCabe – felt forced to strike and to air more of the FAI’s dirty laundry to the media to compel them into progress.

While the men’s European Championships are finishing – Ireland did not qualify – the qualifiers for the women’s European Championships are ongoing, with a game played on Friday night against England and against France on Tuesday.

Rather than focusing on the two women’s games in the lead-up, the FAI announced the new men’s manager. The already limited space to discuss the women’s qualifiers now overtaken by the flurry of takes on how an Icelandic dentist was coming in to revive the struggling men’s team.

While Damien Duff’s comments about razing the FAI, firing 90 per cent of its workforce and starting from scratch are perhaps excessive, it’s clear there’s a significant amount to do for the FAI to be something unique in international football: a positive space for players and coaches alike.

There is no resolution to this story, no happily ever afters. Careers were stalled, trauma was inflicted, players became victims and then survivors.

The beautiful game made ugly to the players involved – something exacerbated by the recent positive press for the FAI around equal pay, proper conditions, stand-alone sponsorship helping the women’s team to qualify for their first World Cup.

The brave women who agreed to speak to RTÉ and the Sunday Independent have clarified the situation, told the country what happens without proper guidance and governance, held the FAI accountable for regarding women as an afterthought.

For the past 30 years, the players have held these individual truths. Now, at least, they can hopefully feel lighter, unburdened of a shame that was never theirs to carry.