Paul Fennessy

TO MANY VIEWERS, the recent Luis Rubiales scandal and the subsequent fallout was a shocking case of blatant sexism quite unlike anything they had seen before in such a high-profile, international event.

Yet for many of those within women’s soccer, it was a sad but not surprising example of how poorly female players have historically been treated by people in positions of power.

Ciara McCormack has been one of the individuals who, in recent years, has been regularly speaking about power imbalances and players’ vulnerability to these hierarchical systems.

Since blowing the whistle with an insightful and wide-ranging 2019 blog post on abuse in the sport and exposing the behaviour of now-disgraced former Team Canada and Vancouver Whitecaps women’s soccer coach Bob Birarda, the ex-Ireland international has been regularly addressing these issues in the media and before parliamentary committees.

While acknowledging that progress has been made in recent years with more athletes and whistleblowers speaking out, she believes the problem is still widespread, with female players especially prone to mistreatment and abuse.

“To see all these men, front row clapping Rubiales one day and then issuing statements denouncing his behaviour the next day, it’s indicative of that sort of powerful person and just the whole culture and the whole environment,” she tells The 42.

“It’s tiring, to be honest, to somebody that’s been stuck in the middle of it.

“Every country is still coping with this, and players are still not in safe environments, and players are still losing, they can’t go out there and just play soccer and are having to deal with all this crap.”

In addition to her advocacy work, McCormack at 44 years old remains an active footballer.

Ahead of the 2023 season, she signed with Women’s Premier Division side Treaty United, ending a hiatus of nearly 10 years out of the game.

The Vancouver-born player qualifies for the Republic through parents from Cork and Athlone respectively, and won eight Ireland caps between 2008 and 2010.

Unsurprisingly given her age and lengthy period out of the sport, McCormack has been used sparingly this year, featuring in three of Treaty’s 15 league matches so far.

The Limerick-based team have generally struggled — they are third from bottom at present, winning one, drawing five and losing nine, though with McCormack in the starting XI, their record reads: one win, one draw and one loss. 

As someone who has witnessed abusive situations, McCormack is better qualified than most to comment on them.

As she told The 42 in 2021: “I wasn’t sexually harassed or any of those things, but I existed within those environments. I saw my teammates getting targeted. I spoke up about it within various circumstances and suffered personal consequences for that.” 

It was a broken foot that prompted McCormack’s initial decision to call it a day in 2014 amid a career in which she felt she was “always injured,” though the behind-the-scenes politics and recurring inappropriate behaviour from powerful people didn’t help matters.

She had previously contemplated retirement at the age of 30 owing to a sense of disillusionment before being offered the chance to join the Irish team and go on a US Tour — an experience that proved a breath of fresh air in contrast with the toxic situation she had become accustomed to in Canada.

The obvious question now is whether McCormack feels much has changed since her 2023 return to action.

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For years, McCormack has been working as an advocate, highlighting instances of abuse in women’s soccer and trying to ensure better conditions for future players.

In the past, she has expressed hope for the creation of an organisation that seeks to give athletes more of a voice on these matters but is not especially optimistic about such a scheme coming to fruition anytime soon.

“It boils down to the fact that institutions and organisations are the ones with the money and the power.

“They don’t want empowered athletes — empowered athletes will take away their money and power.”

Still, these feelings of pessimism have not stopped McCormack and others from striving to create change.

“In Canada anyway, I think the positives are a lot of athletes across multiple sports have come together behind the scenes.

“We had government hearings that I had to speak at in December and April, which to be honest, played a role in me stepping back from Treaty for May and June just because emotionally, it brought up a lot again.

“But from that perspective in government anyway here [in Canada], it is starting to get recognised by the broader society.

“So I do think that’s a solution to try to start galvanising the athlete voice because I think that that’s what’s missing from all of this.”

Indeed, the refusal to listen to athletes’ voices was at the heart of the Spain controversy, as their federation for so long refused to take seriously 15 players’ protests before the 2023 World Cup.

Whistleblower and footballer Ciara McCormack pictured after appearing at the Heritage Committee looking into Canadian sport on Monday, April 24, 2023 in Ottawa. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

So while McCormack has been encouraged by the developments of the last decade that have increasingly seen mistreated athletes refuse to be silenced, she believes there is a long way to go concerning the treatment of those who play sports.

“If we want to see progress, there has to be structural change,” she says. “There have to be women at the table [rather than] the death grip of money and power that some of these guys are seen to be able to have without any systems in place to hold them accountable or get rid of them.”

The Treaty player believes the change should extend to coaches modifying overly aggressive and abusive behaviour on the sidelines.

“I’m friends with a lot of coaches,” she explains. “And a lot of coaches now feel like the athletes are getting too much power in certain situations.

“But I do think, part of being a coach is you’re impacting people’s lives in a very instrumental way, and there have to be higher standards, and we can’t just look at win and loss records as defining success.

“When you’re at matches, and you’re watching, I always say there’s no other industry that a person can make a mistake in their job, and then have their coach throw their arms up and scream: ‘What the fuck?’ and that’s [considered] acceptable behaviour.

“And so I think, whether playing against teams or different situations, those are things now that I feel I’m a lot more sensitive to.

“If you just [focus on] coach behaviour, and you just start to put it in the context of a classroom, I still think there’s so much that’s allowed to go on, that’s so normalised that I don’t think it’s okay.

“And that’s also part of what I think needs to change, and I’m speaking broadly, I’ve had a positive experience with our coaching staff at Treaty.”

The sense of ambiguity about the fine line between player abuse and acceptable levels of motivation is a topic that football and other sports have wrestled with for years now.

McCormack is well aware of the counter-arguments but insists major changes are needed while emphasising that she is not speaking about any one specific case.

“It’s not about handling everybody with kid gloves,” she says. “But in sports, there’s just this normalised mistreatment of athletes that I just think is very unhealthy.

“In the context of any other industry or job, it would never be accepted. But for whatever reason, it’s been allowed to infiltrate soccer.

“There’s just so much behaviour in sport that would never fly by in a regular environment. It’s not about being soft on people. It’s about being respectful and speaking to people the way that you’d like to be spoken to — kindergarten lessons, dude. I just think it has gone totally off the rails as a sport.”