A dancer. An artist. A joy. A college star. A whistleblower. A survivor. A footballer. An Irish player. A World Cup debutant. This is Sinéad Farrelly.
Sinéad Farrelly and Ireland are preparing to make their World Cup debut against Australia on Thursday.Ask people to talk about how Sinéad Farrelly plays football and there’s an ebullient consensus.
If this was a movie, there’d be one of those zip-back-through-time montages, and we’d see a young nine-year-old watching the US Women’s National Team win the World Cup in 1999. Farrelly and her best friend Bridget would be lined up outside their homes in Haverton, Pennsylvania holding posters to implore passing motorists to ‘honk for the 99ers’.
“It was always a hope. I wanted to play at the highest level and do this. But at the time, I just didn’t know what was possible and I had so much self-doubt.”Back to May 2011. An injury had opened up a spot on the US women’s national team roster ahead of the World Cup and Farrelly’s sliding doors narrative takes shape.
“I always knew she would be one of the most sought after players,” recalls Swanson, the head coach at the University of Virginia where Farrelly played between 2007 and 2010. Philadelphia Independence were equally sold on Farrelly’s ability in midfield, making her their pick in the draft. As well as the professional league being in financial difficulties, Riley had zoned in on Farrelly as not only someone he could control on the field, but a player he could rule over in all aspects of her life.Publicly, Riley told reporters that he expected the Pennsylvania native to make the US Olympic team in 2012 but figured the World Cup of 2011 would be ‘too soon’ for her.
I remember when I turned down the national team being like, ‘I can’t wait to tell Paul, he’s going to be so proud of me.’ And he was.”Aged 47 and married, he began to make sexualised comments to a 21-year-old Farrelly. “And we literally like laid on the bed and he had sex with both of us. I remember being like out of my body watching. And I was so confused and disgusted. And I just remember being like, ‘This has happened before’.
Farrelly hadn’t been ready to tell anybody about what had happened with Riley and the reaction of the Thorns felt like vindication of her position. She had always thought she would never tell a soul about Riley. That they would ‘take it to their graves’. Riley, with his actions, had taken soccer and all of its possibilities and opportunities from her. It was time to reclaim it.
There was a strategy though: make sure the football is still there; get the fitness back; find a NWSL team. “I just felt it was a matter of time that Sinéad got played in – that she would do well at Gotham. What’s happening now with Sinéad does not surprise me at all. At all.”The club’s general manager Yael Averbuch West had played against Farrelly so knew the potential there.
Swanson elaborated on the journey during which he echoed his 2011 sentiment to the player – “You gotta do this. You gotta give it a shot. You gotta go.” “But I honestly would not have talked to her or reached out to her if I didn’t feel Sinéad could help,” he adds. “I knew that if Sinéad could get anywhere back to where she was; she can help any team. I felt that strongly about her.
That timing saw Farrelly join the Ireland team for their US training camp in April where Denise O’Sullivan described her as the best player during training. “Sinéad loves to get forward. I think she likes the freedom to express herself on the field. She can solve pressure. So what I would say is, when I look at her and I look at Ireland… They’ve got some really good players. They’re very organised but Sinéad is spontaneous and can solve pressure and can break teams down. I would say this for a lot of teams – a lot of teams don’t have some of the qualities that Sinéad has. They don’t have a player of her quality.
Some of that anxiety was evident during her 75-or-so minutes playing France in Ireland’s send-off game earlier this month. But a few misplaced passes masked some of the less-showy strings to her bow, as well as her leadership, particularly during the first 30 minutes when the team kept pace with much higher-ranked opposition.
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