Katie McCabe denies playing lead role in Vera Pauw’s exit as Ireland boss
Katie McCabe has denied she was a central character in Vera Pauw’s exit as Ireland boss but admits she regrets her handling of the infamous emoji post.
The Ireland skipper tweeted a zipped mouth image within 20 minutes of their final World Cup game against Nigeria. The scoreless draw was overshadowed by a sideline spat between the parties, with Pauw claiming she refused a request from the captain to substitute Sinead Farrelly.
Pauw has since not had her contract renewed following an FAI review that centred majorly on feedback from players involved in the tournament in Australia.
The Arsenal playmaker has flatly rejected the notion of player power influencing the FAI’s decision, which sees interim boss Eileen Gleeson take charge of the Nations League campaign, starting on Saturday against Northern Ireland at Aviva Stadium.
“On reflection, I could have maybe handled it a little bit better,” she said of impetuously venting through social media.
“There were obviously a lot of things said by the media and people having opinions which is absolutely fine. The way the women’s game is going now, where we’re higher profile players, what we do will be looked at of course.
“This thing about Katie versus Vera is not a thing. As much as the player power narrative has been turned around, that’s not the case.
"We understand how people can interpret that, the public can, but we’re footballers at the end of the day.
"We want to talk about football, we don’t want to be talking about all of this nitty-gritty going on in the media. We want to focus on training and playing games for our country, that’s what’s most important for us.
“I can speak for myself and my team-mates – we gave 100% every time we stepped on that pitch - for not just
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