Tommy Martin: For all Vera Pauw achieved, losing the support of players was the only thing that counted
Inpho/dan Sheridan Vera Pauw Picture:
To many observers, the defenestration of Vera Pauw as Ireland manager could not have been more shocking had the playing squad launched her from the stage at the team’s World Cup homecoming into the nearby River Liffey.
And at surface level it looks bad. In leading an Irish team to a World Cup, Pauw achieved what only Jack Charlton and Mick McCarthy had done before her. More importantly, she had led Irish women’s soccer into a new frontier, author of a sporting paradigm shift.
Let’s be honest, by the criteria under which the FAI normally hand out new contracts, she clears what is not a high bar.
Many of the same people expressing incredulity have pointed towards the men’s hotseat, on which Stephen Kenny’s backside is shifting uncomfortably ahead of the upcoming crunch matches with France and the Netherlands. Where has the ruthlessness shown by the FAI blazers towards Pauw been when presented with the many false dawns of the Kenny reign?
And who knows, perhaps the Abbotstown top brass have merely been rehearsing for what may lay in store should things go wrong for Kenny in the months ahead? After all, the new FAI regime had, until this week, not yet experienced the dark thrill of a managerial takedown: the foreboding leaks, the late night board meetings, the contractual wrangle, the hastily penned statements of thanks and best wishes. Maybe Vera was just a dry run, a sharpening of the blade, the horn being sounded on sacking season.
But for Pauw, this was not a drill. She will now slide into a booth in the Hard Luck Café alongside Giovanni Trapattoni and Martin O’Neill, previous outsiders who have delivered major tournament qualification to a grateful Irish nation, only to find themselves perplexed when events took a fickle turn later on.
No doubt Trap and O’Neill will console her with their shared experience of the Irish delusion – the tendency, when fed a morsel of success, to bang on the table looking for more. Like her famous predecessors, Pauw has learned that the chorus of Olé, Olé, Olé turns very quickly into What Have You Done For Me Lately?
But just because Vera Pauw deserved a new contract, doesn’t mean she should have gotten one.
The decline and fall of Vera’s empire has been documented in blow-by-blow detail this week, as those who cover the Irish women’s team try to explain to bandwagon recruits exactly what happened to the woman feted as Manager of the Year at the RTÉ Sports Awards just eight months ago.
But as much as the lingering stink of the Houston Dash allegations took the shine off Pauwmania, the die was cast for the manager by the dog days of Ireland’s World Cup odyssey. In press conference after press conference once Ireland’s Group B elimination had been sealed, players sang off the same hymn sheet – and none were chanting paeans to Pauw staying on.
The general tone was of so many Pontius Pilates washing their hands of their out of contract gaffer. Take Megan Connolly’s response when asked prior to the Nigeria match whether the FAI should stand by their woman. “It is not my decision,” Connolly said. “What we have achieved in the past two, three years under Vera has been amazing.
“She helped us get to this point and I can only speak on my own personal experience and Vera has been great for me. But that is not my decision.”
It’s not you Vera, it’s us. Well actually it’s you. The next day came the notorious contretemps with captain Katie McCabe and the zipped mouth emoji. Without having been in the stuffy confines of the extended board meeting that decided her fate, we do not know exactly to what extent the players’ views forced the FAI’s hand, but it would be surprising if they were not the clincher.
For all that she had achieved in the job, losing the support of the players was the only thing that counted. As happens whenever player power is exercised, there has been a whiff of moral outrage in response. What we are seeing here is insubordination, a breakdown in the natural order, the lunatics taking over the asylum, society gone to hell in a handcart! If you tolerate this, your children will be next!
But in the same way that climate change sceptics will attack environmental do-gooders, this is making a cultural issue out of a matter of fact. When a manager loses the dressing room, they are finished. Unless they are Spanish, in which case they win the World Cup first, and then they are finished.
Whatever reasons the Irish players had for losing faith in their manager – tactics, selection, too bloody Dutch – they were decisive when it came to the FAI’s post-World Cup review. Those who find this fact appalling point to the outdated hierarchies of the 20th century’s post-war settlement, the militaristic understanding that managers issue orders and players follow them on pain of death.
It is no coincidence that those condemning the decision to part ways with Pauw cast a cold eye on McCabe, a young, gay, working-class woman with the cheek to be uppity about a profession in which she has risen to the very highest level. How dare she! What would Fergie have said!
Pauw is out of a job because you must bring the McCabes and the Connollys and the rest of them with you nowadays. You only need to look at the thread that runs through the most successful Irish sports teams – Limerick hurlers, Dublin footballers and the Irish rugby team to name but three – to see that they are collaborative enterprises, where players own what they do and are all the better for it. At a recent press conference, beefy prop Tadhg Furlong explained how the Irish rugby squad operated without social hierarchies. WE’RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS HERE, PEOPLE!
So, the next Irish coach will need to be more touchy-feely, though not in a Luis Rubiales sort of way. More arm around the shoulder. Less biff, bang, Pauw.