Footage has emerged of the foul on Ireland’s Denise O’Sullivan that puts the midfielder’s World Cup in jeopardy.
Moments before Friday’s World Cup warm-up at Meakin Park outside Brisbane was abandoned, Colombia number five Lorena Bedoya can be seen making contact with O’Sullivan’s lower left leg after the ball was played by the Irish vice captain.
The challenge happened in the 20th minute when Niamh Fahey broke up Colombian possession from an attacking throw-in and Heather Payne pushed the ball infield. Australian referee Caitlin Williams immediately signals for a free-kick, and she subsequently showed Bedoya a yellow card.
Play stopped as Dr Siobhan Foreman attended to O’Sullivan before Irish physio Angela Kenneally took the 29-year-old to hospital for a CT-scan and X-ray.
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The results showed no fracture, but Ireland manager Vera Pauw stated that “the next 48 hours” will reveal if bone bruising and a soft tissue injury will rule the Cork dynamo out of Thursday’s tournament opener against Australia in Sydney.
Pauw revealed over the weekend that she had asked Colombia manager Nelson Abadía to calm his players down before O’Sullivan was injured as there had been an earlier foul on Ruesha Littlejohn.
“This was outside the rules of the game,” said Pauw, who explained that she turned to FAI director of football Marc Canham for help when she saw “the fear” in her players’ eyes.
With 23 minutes played in the first half, Canham took the decision to abandon Friday’s non-capped international at the Irish training base in Slacks Creek. Before doing so, he spoke on the phone to FAI chief executive Jonathan Hill.
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Media did not see the incident first hand as the game was played behind closed doors.
The FAI refused to release any more video evidence from Friday’s game against Colombia and will not post the footage on the Fifa hub.
“That won’t happen because it wasn’t a full game,” said Pauw. “It wouldn’t help anyone.”
It would, however, help the FAI to defend itself from accusations made by Colombia midfielder Daniela Caracas.
“They are just girls, one little foul and they started complaining,” Caracas, the Espanyol midfielder, told fans outside the ground. “They were having a chat amongst themselves to continue or not, so we weren’t going to hang around waiting for them. Let them eat s**t.”
The FAI refused to confirm the identity of the Colombia player who injured O’Sullivan.
“We are not making any further comment on the Columbia game and are now fully focused on our first World Cup game against Australia,” said an FAI spokesperson via email on Sunday morning.
Preparation for this World Cup has been meticulously planned by Hill, Pauw and the FAI staff, but three incidents have drained the camp’s energy reserves. On Saturday morning Pauw openly admitted that she was exhausted. And not for football reasons.
The Dutch coach (60) denies making a serious error of judgment in April when she effectively prompted the Athletic to reopen an investigation into her single season coaching the Houston Dash in 2018.
“When do you start thinking of the double standards and not only protecting players from coaches but also coaches from players?” she emailed Sarah Shephard, a writer at the Athletic.
When the media outlet dug into previous allegations that Pauw was “abusive and belittling” in Houston, Pauw made a counter allegation against a former Dash staffer, stating that he threatened to “shoot me in the head” for changing a training session from morning to evening.
This story became the central narrative ahead of France’s visit to Tallaght stadium earlier this month, and Pauw breathed fresh oxygen into the narrative by claiming a person from the US “is targeted to destroy my career”.
When The Irish Times approached the person believed to be who Pauw was referring to, and who she intends to “take legal action” against after the World Cup, that person responded: “Perhaps it’s me? I don’t know. That said, I didn’t contribute anything to the recent article, nor did I have anything to do with the NWSL [National Women’s Soccer League] investigation [which banned Pauw from coaching professionally in America].
“All I can say is everyone has moved on,” the person added. “She is the one who approached the Athletic.”
Preparation for the tournament suffered a second blow when skipper Katie McCabe was forced out of the French game with an ankle injury.
McCabe appears to have made a rapid recovery, but O’Sullivan, arguably the only other irreplaceable member of the squad, is gingerly walking around Brisbane in a moon boot. The team moves to Sydney on Wednesday, just over 24 hours before the tournament opener at a sold out 83,500 Stadium Australia.
It is difficult to imagine a scenario worse for Ireland than a women’s World Cup without O’Sullivan. Her prognosis remains unclear at the moment. Birmingham City’s Jamie Finn is in Brisbane on standby.
