'It will take a long time to get over it' says Ireland's Jamie Finn on World Cup axe
AXED: Manager Vera Pauw, speaks to players including Jamie Finn at Stadium Australia in Sydney. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
At least Jamie Finn’s World Cup jilting didn’t become terminal like Gary Waddock and Kevin Foley.
Vera Pauw’s reputation for ruthlessness was never so personified in July when a player who’d started six of the nine qualifiers was culled not just from the team but the squad.
That two of the games she didn't feature in were due to suspension – the first in Georgia to avoid a third yellow card and in Slovakia after she’d incurred it in the play-off clincher against Finland underlined her central role.
And so shock reverberated from within their Belfield campus throughout the country and beyond when Finn’s name was excluded from the list of 23 chosen for the trip to Australia at the eleventh hour.
Shades of Jack Charlton dumping Waddock on the eve of Italia ’90 and Giovanni Trapattoni doing likewise to Foley for Euro 2012 veered into the women’s sphere for the first time.
Pauw offered a teary explanation to the axing; nothing compared to in the anguish of what the player endured.
Four months on and Finn is still coming to grips with how Ireland’s major tournament breakthrough that she was instrumental in felt so distant.
The Birmingham City player was part of the delegation to travel Down Under but merely as a standby player, the pain most acute as a bystander to the occasion of the opener against co-hosts Australia before 76,000 fans in Sydney.
It was one of the odder calls in the reign of Pauw that was unceremoniously halted by the FAI after the World Cup amid a deluge of adverse player feedback.
The one consolation is that unlike the humiliated pair before her, Finn has resumed her international career.
Into Pauw’s place has come interim boss Eileen Gleeson and a permanent manager will be installed ahead of next year’s Euro qualifiers.
While she still seeks answers that may never come, the dynamo is relieved to be back onboard for the Nations League series that continues on Friday against Armenia.
Those 12 minutes she was absorbed in the most recent outing, last month’s 4-0 hiding of Hungary, felt like the most vital of her 16 caps.
“I had been involved in absolutely everything during qualification, so to get that news and then all your friends and teammates around you got the best news, was a shock," she confessed.
“My experience was totally different to everyone that was there. I’m probably still processing the whole situation. It will take a long time to get over it.
“I think I just have to process what happened; not really why it happened because you might never get an answer to why things like that happen to you in life.”
Curiosity and pride meld to ensure the mystery remains a bugbear. Pauw attributing the bombshell to a change of style felt as empty in public as it did within the room the 25-year-old heard the news.
Adaptability is a vital ingredient throughout tournament football and here was a player proven in fulfilling assignments, regardless of position.
Finn’s family in Swords weren’t being presumptuous by booking flights once she had crowned her contribution by starting and finishing the playoff in Scotland 12 months ago.
“There was no real indication,” recalled the former Shelbourne player.
“When I reflect, I’d started every single game for my club. I always ask myself, ‘Could I have done something better?’ But no, even off the pitch, it was so tunnel vision towards the World Cup, thinking this is what I must do to make the World Cup.
“I can say for sure I ticked every box to do that. Even when I came into camp, everyone knows me, I gave 100 percent, played any position the manager wanted me to.”
That excuse provoked the most bewilderment.
“I’m a very versatile player so to kind of say that to you, yeah it…’". The diplomatic pause is filled with a suggestion: Doesn’t make sense?
“No.” True to form, at her lowest ebb, Finn jabbed back, fighting her corner against a haze of confusion.
“Of course, as a player, you have to give your views on how you think you performed,” she reveals “I think it’s important to say that, but yeah, ultimately it was the manager’s decision and it’s a game of opinions.”
Ireland didn’t win a game, Finn won an army of admirers for the magnanimity and, tellingly, she’s in an Ireland camp Pauw has been detached from.
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