Pauw has no fear of stepping into the eye of the storm

Vera Pauw's Republic of Ireland are taking on USA in two friendlies, and with that she will face the American media for the first time since she was named in a report last December into widespread misconduct and abuse in National Women’s Soccer League.

WILL BE THE STORM: Vera Pauw will face American media for the first time since being named in a report last December into misconduct and abuse in NWSL. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

Central Texas had been parched. Yet as locals scurried and skipped for cover around downtown Austin on Thursday morning, there were a few flickers of regret.

Drought prayers were being over-answered, the weather gods saturating the state capital in biblical torrents of rain, thunder and lighting crashing and blinding through the place before first light. It’s not likely to let up any time soon. Austin is expected to get upwards of two inches of rain before the weekend. That may rank as a fine stretch back home but for context, the entire month of March saw just 1.6 inches of rainfall here.

Vera Pauw and her Ireland staff were going to huddle for a morning meeting to plot a path around the puddles. The squad have been preparing for Saturday’s showdown with the World Cup holders on the fertile green grounds of St. Edward's University in the south of the city but Thursday felt like a day for indoor work.

One of the oldest - and most jaded - of storytelling tropes is to take the weather and tie it to something completely unrelated, bring the meteorological background into the foreground to give a moment more emphasis or meaning. It’s the most tried, tested and trusted of false equivalences. Would there have been wild thunderstorms in Austin on Thursday if Pauw and her squad hadn’t been here at all? Of course there would. And yet…and yet.

On Friday lunchtime, the Ireland manager will step into the press conference room at Q2 Stadium and you’d confidently forecast that the atmospheric pressure of the place will get heavy in a hurry.

Pauw knew what she was letting her Ireland side in for when she agreed to face the most daunting team in the sport, twice no less, just months out from a maiden World Cup campaign. She also knew what she was letting herself in for: facing the American media for the first time since she was named in a report last December into widespread misconduct and abuse in National Women’s Soccer League.

And as the rain lashed and darkened the red granite and limestone historic heart of Austin on the eve of her appearance, Pauw may have peered out and approved of it all. The Ireland manager and her staff are aware that the host nation’s media members will zero in on the report’s allegations but there will be no cowering for cover. Pauw is ready to again refute them in the strongest terms.

“I will stay loud,” Pauw insisted recently. “Every time somebody says [the allegations], I will be loud. I am not going to, like people say, sit in a corner and let the storm go over you – I will be the storm.” 

Pauw will be joined at the press conference by soon-to-be-centurion Denise O’Sullivan, who will be captain on her 100th appearance on Saturday and is Ireland’s most prominent and longest-standing NWSL performer. The manager would prefer that her issue doesn’t absolutely dominate proceedings. That preference may not be met.

From the very outset, there has been a divergence somewhere over the Atlantic in how the allegations were seen. While Pauw, her employers and some former players rejected and consistently refuted the findings that she had bullied and body-shamed players during her spell in charge of Houston Dash, that pushback was met with incredulity in some women’s soccer circles here, particularly on social media, where the FAI’s initial defence of its manager was excoriated.

Pauw’s efforts to clear her name have entered the legal sphere with US-based lawyer Thomas Newkirk representing her and seeking to have her name cleared by the NWSL as well as having subsequent sanctions — Pauw must acknowledge the findings and take a training course if she ever wants to work Stateside again — lifted.

“Vera has a great reputation,” Newkirk told The Sunday Times last week. “She has unequivocal evidence and information to show that she wasn’t shaming, but was doing the exact opposite.” 

That was also the initial and adamant reaction of one of the Dash players from Pauw’s 2018 squad, South African defender Jane van Wyck.

“The accusations against Vera are ridiculous,” Van Wyk said in December. “[It] comes with high standards and high demands. It is always Vera's intention to get the best out of an individual. Certain players may have mistaken this for a kind of abuse because they may not have been challenged enough by other coaches at an earlier stage.” 

Some have pointed to Pep Guardiola’s very public criticism of Kalvin Phillips weight too as some form of mitigation but equivalencies, again, can be precarious things.

Kristie Mewis, a midfielder for the Dash during the season in question, may well line up opposite her former coach Saturday. There are layers and layers to it all. The presence of Sinead Farrelly, one of the whistleblowers whose bravery in going public sparked the investigations into abuse in the game here, in Pauw’s panel in Austin has added another.

Perhaps further layers will be peeled back by Friday’s questioning. One thing is certain — Pauw won’t be seeking shelter.