In a corner of the O’Reilly Hall building in UCD, Niamh Fahey looks around the room and marvels at it all. At 35, she’s the oldest member of the Ireland squad that will go to Australia and she’s seen every version of the life she chose. This one is taking a little getting used to.
Fahey’s debut happened 16 years and a lifetime ago. Ireland played Portugal in the Algarve Cup and, inevitably enough, they did so untroubled by any significant media presence from home. And now look – a Women’s World Cup media day with over 60 journalists and photographers snooping around, insinuating ourselves into the lives of the squad as it heads off on its greatest adventure.
We look over at Abbie Larkin, the youngest member of squad, almost exactly half Fahey’s age. She’s playing for Shamrock Rovers, has already been the subject of a big-noise transfer – surely not her last – and has a line of hacks queuing up to ask her about going to the World Cup. Would have been hard to imagine when you were that age, eh Niamh?
[ Mary Hannigan’s player-by-player guide to Ireland’s Women’s World Cup squadOpens in new window ]
“You wouldn’t even come up with it,” Fahey laughs. “You couldn’t envisage this, just the difference between where she is at just 18 and where I was starting off at her age. I mean, it’s fantastic. It’s how it should be.
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“I’m glad that this is how it is for the young girls coming up. This is their first World Cup, their first experience of what a major tournament is like. And mine too! I’m new to it as well. It’s a privilege to be part of it, to have been part of the journey.”
This is all getting very real now. The day begins with a presentation of jerseys, Vera Pauw up on stage and all 23 squad members coming up to join her for a hug and a word and pose for a photo. Ruesha Littlejohn bounces into the room doing an Ali shuffle, throwing jabs and flinging high kicks.
It’s when they get ticked off the list one by one like this that the evolution of Pauw’s squad really hits home. The first defender called up on to the stage is Heather Payne, the indefatigable Roscommon woman who spent the whole of the qualifying campaign running the legs off herself as the team’s lone striker. She has been repurposed for the tournament as a wing back, which might seem slightly odd on the face of it.
That’s until you remember that Pauw is really just being true to her word. She swore the morning after the Scotland game that it would be a different Ireland that went to Australia, that she knew there was a limited future in trying to just wait the opposition out. Ireland are going to be more adventurous, out of necessity.
Kyra Carusa is the main striker now. Amber Barrett will be the change of pace off the bench. Marissa Sheva has come in, introduced on stage here by Marie Crowe as: “A multi-talented footballer and runner – and that’s all we know so far!” Payne will keep running all day – just from a different position and at a different angle. The squad is shape-shifting, adopting, trying to be a more rounded thing than the side that qualified last November.
And all of them are here. The FAI have placed them at 23 different desks around the hall, ready to answer any and all questions that anyone might have. They’re open and willing and fun, as sportswomen generally tend to be. There’s none of the guarded paranoia that often goes with these kind of events.
Sinead Farrelly holds court in one corner, laying bare the most extraordinary story of anyone in the room. We huddle around her to listen and come away with a yarn worthy of a Netflix documentary. Look out for it in Saturday’s papers. You won’t be underwhelmed.
The room is a forest of cameras and phones and mics, so much so that it’s easy to miss the slim blonde figure of Pauw walking around in a tracksuit, with a duffle bag hanging off her back and holding her iPhone upright. She’s filming the scene, smiling as she goes, slipping from desk to desk without saying anything to anyone. It’s four years to the day since the FAI confirmed that Colin Bell was stepping down, setting in train the process by which Pauw came to Ireland.
Look what happened.
