John Fallon: Grand home stages central to women’s legacy

Uphill task for incoming Cork City’s women’s boss, FAI Chairman’s governance drive and Shels lose Academy guru Barron to Abbotstown.

Áine O’Gorman: Admits the World Cup didn’t derive the long-term benefits promised.

SUMMER sizzling in Mexico and Atlanta is gone for Irish fans but the first weekend in December is shaping into a Christmas cracker.

Based on wins over the past week, Ireland’s women have every reason to believe they’ll be staging a play-off
second leg for a World Cup place on December 5.

Samba sounds in faraway Brazil can be heard in the distance.

One hundred miles up the M1 in Belfast the following day, their male counterparts will be part of the Euro 2028 qualifying draw.

This will be a new territory, for Ireland mustn’t necessarily qualify on the pitch. Two spots are reserved for the four co-hosting federations they’re among.

Tournament qualification is exclusively within the gift of the females for the time being and recent history ought to scream lessons on how to maximise the momentum that accelerated with full points from two games against Poland.

The third-place finish in the group that looks certain with the final two qualifiers in June remaining posits Ireland among the top 12 nations in Europe.

Currently, they’re situated ninth. A guaranteed 11 from the continent will be heading to South America in June 2027.

They trekked further, to and around Australia, in 2023 for their tournament breakthrough.

There was plenty of chatter ahead of that World Cup bow about creating a legacy off the month-long expedition, but all Ireland returned from Down Under with was one draw and a camp riven by rancour.

For all the aspiration of inspiring the nations, headlines surrounding Vera Pauw’s removal within a month of the showpiece dominated. Most of the FAI figureheads spouting grandiose declarations have moved on since.

Áine O’Gorman was in Oz, signing off her decorated international career with 118 caps. She continued to play domestically and has migrated into coaching but was frank in admitting, a full two years on, that the World Cup didn’t derive the long-term benefits promised.

“We didn’t piggyback on the success of that enough,” she said.

To the outsider, it was the definition of insanity in plain sight. Three tournament appearances between 1988-1994 by the men’s team weren’t capitalised on as a stimulus for the indigenous sector. Once the party hangover ended, tangible dividends were non-existent.

Women’s national leagues have been on the go since 2011, but the active interest remains sparse.

Mercifully, players don’t have to incur expenses without being recompensed anymore, yet the notion of a participant sticking around for a pittance instead of accepting mediocre offers from abroad is a pipedream.

Attendances still struggles to reach three figures in some cases. An increase in turnout of 1% was hardly worth shouting about in the gallery of PR soundbites.

Given how that product is flatlining after 15 years, the wisdom of recently introducing a U23 reserve tier can only be explained into logic by funding from Uefa.

Ten academy teams were supposed to join the existing dozen for the February kick-off, only for Mayo to withdraw at the 11th hour. A decade on from Castlebar Celtic quitting midseason, it just demonstrates the difficulties in translating the latent interest across the provinces into a firm commitment for durability.

At grassroots levels, female involvement is on the rise but that correlates to a global trend. According to FAI’s action plan, unveiled just over a year ago by Hannah Dingley before she hastily exited, there’s 45,000 registered players in the country.

What it also informed us was an alarming drop-off rate once the giddiness phase lapses and that only 11% of girls in Ireland are meeting required physical activity levels.

When we yesterday sought to assess the metrics of that two-year blueprint (wow, two whole years), the downloadable version on the FAI website malfunctioned.

Most of the aforementioned shortcomings can be blamed to an extent on the FAI being stifled financially by their long-standing debt, currently sitting at €38m. Therefore, it’s just as well the women’s team are belatedly availing of the association’s prime mortgaged asset.

Public pleas to relocate the team from Tallaght to the national stadium for the 2021 games against Australia and Sweden, both inside the world’s top 11 ranked nations, were dismissed as premature.

Even when the team smashed the ceiling of qualification, they were denied their rightful stage due to pitch
upgrades in the run-up to the summer sojourn.

It wasn’t until Pauw’s successor Eileen Gleeson was installed that equality of access was achieved. She has since alleged, in an ongoing legal case, a litany of other inequalities herself and the squad were subjected to over her tenure.

When the gates of the Dublin 4 venue were finally opened up for the visit of Northern Ireland, in through them came 35,944 to savour the occasion.

Figures remained in that vicinity throughout the Euro 2025 campaign that began with the visit of England and concluded with a bitterly disappointing defeat to Wales.

They were back up to 18,267 last Saturday, around the same number attracted to Páirc Uí Chaoimh for the win over France in 2024.

Some of the current squad were playing in front of less than a thousand at Turner’s Cross 15 years ago.

The generation preceding them had a smattering of 400 family, friends and loyalists show up at Richmond Park for a 2006 World Cup qualifier win over Switzerland at Richmond Park.

Popularity levels, on that front, are unrecognisable.

While that hasn’t created money-spinners for the association due to discounted ticketing, the catalyst for promotion that proper, modern stadia provide is immeasurable in benefits.

The only shame is it didn’t occur sooner.

Leeside on June 5 for the meeting with the Netherlands can deliver some distraction to the absence of green in North America that same month but this is a journey worthy of support for the rest of the year and into 2027.

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Problems for Cork City Women run deeper than dugout

One can only wonder if the incoming boss of Cork City’s women’s team, the fourth manager in three seasons, will fill the vacancy solely for local affinity reasons.

Barry Ryan quit on Monday morning, less than 24 hours after a 4-1 defeat at Wexford kept City on zero points at the foot of the table. It’s a position they’re familiar with, cut adrift in two of the last three seasons.

Former LOI player Ryan exhibited noble intentions, promoting several of the graduates he’d sculpted during his spell as U19 manager. Perhaps budgetary constraints enforced that, but overloading the team with youth is high-risk. This wasn’t Alex Ferguson mixing the Class of ’92 with Manchester United’s chiselled core.

Ryan might have been justified in declaring last week that the “days of getting beaten by five or six are over”, but that shouldn’t be the judgement criteria for a club of Cork City’s profile and catchment area.

Dermot Usher wasn’t embracing the traditional model in the UK and Ireland of subsidising the women’s team following his takeover in 2023.

“I’d like to have the women’s, men’s and Academy run as three separate entities,” he said.

“None should be dependent on the other, with standalone profit-and-loss centres.”

Unless that changes, a mercurial talent like Eva Mangan will continue to operate out of loyalty. Nobody should expect the next boss to be any different, considering the difficult conditions that prevail.

Keohane’s FAI reform drive begins

Chairpersons like being perceived as change agents, and some of the reforms pledged by FAI supremo Tony Keohane, or a route towards them, are gaining traction.

Although the recent issue of jurisdiction over who decides whether Ireland fulfils the Israel games in September copper-fastened the supremacy of the board, they’re not necessarily qualified to adjudicate on football matters.

Independent board members were a welcome addition after the John Delaney regime fell, but their suitability for voting on contentious topics like summer soccer, registration windows, or abolition of emerging talent programmes is questionable. Board meetings covering the gamut have often run for four hours.

“I think we need to change the way we do our business — clean and simple,” former Tesco CEO Keohane asserted at the AGM last November.

“That involves a reform and governance change. The definition of madness is, as we know, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We have to do our business differently, and that starts with changing how we work. Change needs to be structural as well as culture.”

That has manifested in a working group being assembled, composed of representatives from the general assembly pillars, senior executives, and a couple of external gurus.

They’re due to meet for the first time next month.

Barron headhunted by FAI after five years leading Shels Academy

Barron’s coaching journey began at renowned nursey St Kevin’s Boys before he became assistant manager at Warrenpoint during their time in Northern Ireland’s top tier but he’s been in the Shelbourne hotseat for the past five years.

He was among the club’s staff to feature in last year’s RTÉ documentary, Football Families, which provided a first-hand insight of the machinations for players and coaches in the post-Brexit era.

His spell with Shels is to end next month as he moves into the governing body’s coach education department.

Former League of Ireland staff are dominating football roles in the FAI amid the organisational shake-up.

John Martin (director of football), Shane Robinson (assistant DOF) and Aidan Price (head of talent ID) all previously worked at Shamrock Rovers. Craig Sexton returned to the coaching department from Bohemians, soon to be joined by Barron.