The Ireland women’s team kicked off their first-ever World Cup campaign on Thursday in front of a sell-out 75,000 crowd at Stadium Australia in Sydney. Led by the tenacious Dubliner Katie McCabe, the Girls in Green fought ferociously against Australia and genuinely threatened the hosts at times, but ultimately came up short after conceding a frustrating penalty.
A bizarre skirmish with Colombia in the lead-up to the tournament, in which star player Denise O’Sullivan was hacked down, saw the South Americans decry the Irish as soft and sneeringly brand them “little girls”, but those claims were completely squashed by the team’s pugnacious and defiant performance against Australia, with McCabe, Niamh Fahey and Co. showing no mercy in the tackle. “I enjoyed it, I think everyone enjoyed it,” McCabe said afterwards, with obvious relish, when asked about the physicality of the match. “I think they did as well.”
Australia are 12 places above Ireland in the FIFA world ranking (10th to 22nd) and were strong favourites to win the opening game, particularly as tournament co-hosts. Even though they were missing Sam Kerr, who is one of the best players in the women’s game, they controlled much of the match, but Vera Pauw can certainly take positives from the performance and will have plenty to ponder ahead of the game against Canada, not least whether or not to play Abbie Larkin from the start.
Before kick-off, the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) put out a sincere promotional video on social media with the title, “Dear Ireland… Ní neart go cur le chéile” in which the narrator addresses Ireland and “the five million people on our isle [sic]”. On Twitter, the overwhelming response to the video was, as you’d expect, positive, with people, including Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Ireland men’s player John Egan and countless others joining the chorus to wish the team well. Why wouldn’t they?
To a northerner of a national mind, however, as much as you wanted to echo the sentiments of the video, it jarred immediately. The five million people on our isle? Did they really say that? Sinn Féin senator Niall Ó Donnghaile replied simply with, “7 million” and we knew exactly what he was getting at. Varadkar, Egan and hundreds others were likely oblivious. This sort of casual deletion of millions of Irish citizens in the north has sadly become commonplace and, like ‘Ireland and Northern Ireland’, it is a symptom of how deeply the malaise of partitionism permeates society in the south.
Here was a piece of content that would undoubtedly have gone through a number of checks before being published and no one seems to have said, “hang on a second, there are seven million people on this isle, not five”. It is all the more absurd considering the makeup of the Ireland women’s team, with Antrim and Tyrone among the counties represented in a truly all-Ireland panel. And it is somewhat ironic, too, given the message contained in the video: Ní neart go cur le chéile – there is no strength without unity.
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