'It felt like being back in the olden days. We were not allowed at the training ground when the men were there'

Aidan Fitzmaurice

September 09 2021 02:30 AM

A 1-0 defeat on the opening day of the season was not the ideal start, but Ireland international Louise Quinn was relieved to be just back on the field of play last weekend, proudly wearing the captain’s armband for Birmingham City for their trip to Tottenham’s home ground.

TV coverage and a healthy crowd of just under 5,000 were pluses, but despite advances made in the women’s game across Europe – including the FAI decision to have pay parity for players in the senior men’s and women’s teams – Quinn’s battles for fair treatment, past and recent, show that complacency is dangerous, given the challenges posed to her and her fellow professionals.

Take her experiences with her previous club Fiorentina. Moving there from Arsenal in 2020, she got to play at a high level in Italy and the Florence club competed in the Champions League, but the sexist treatment of Quinn and her fellow players placed a dark cloud over what was meant to be a dream move to Italy.

“It felt like being back in the olden days. We were not allowed at the training ground when the men were there,” Quinn says. “OK, as a team, we underperformed, but how the team was being treated, we couldn’t perform at all: training every day on the worst turf pitches I have ever played on.

“Every day, not having the gym, not having so many things and being told to be happy and grateful. That wasn’t for me. That wasn’t the mentality I wanted. I loved it, loved the experience of living in Italy and the people I met. But some of the on-pitch stuff, it wasn’t for me.

“I wanted to be able to concentrate on my football and I couldn’t do that. We still finished fourth, had a good end to the season, but I wanted to move on and it was an easy decision to get myself back to England,” says Quinn, who signed for Birmingham before the start of this season.

“One of the managers didn’t like us being near the training ground. He basically didn’t like us being around and made that really clear, clear and obvious.

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“And the club let him do that. They backed down to that and let him have his way. It opened up when a new manager came in and things got a bit better. We were able to use the gym more, but then the old manager came back in and it was the same. That wasn’t a good environment for me.

“They have tried to make changes this season. Towards the end of my time, we were allowed to use the facilities, but it wasn’t good enough.”

That sexist attitude in Italy may seem like an extreme example of football’s attitude towards 50pc of the population in 2021, but there are battlegrounds everywhere. At the end of last season, when Quinn was still at Fiorentina, players at her current club, Birmingham City, were forced to go public with serious concerns they had about their conditions regarding travel, match preparation, training, physio and gym access.

The worst-funded team in the Women’s Super League, Birmingham’s manager was the only full-time employee on the women’s side of the outfit and had to go into some games with just two subs. Somehow, they avoided relegation and are competing in the top flight this season, with three Irish players involved last weekend.

Birmingham saw a mass exodus of players over the summer, but the recruitment of ex-pro Scott Booth as manager and hiring players such as their new Irish contingent of Quinn, Jamie Finn and Eleanor-Ryan Doyle (Marie Hourihane was already on board), was a sign of a commitment by the owners of a better attitude. And City agreeing to host WSL games for Booth’s team at St Andrew’s was also a nod to improved status and a new found respect for the women’s team.

“That was something we heard a lot about last year, being in the Irish national team with some of the (Birmingham) players. It’s something where the club have said they are committed to making changes and backing that up,” Quinn says. “There has been a big upheaval, of players and (the) manager. There is always a bit of a battle, a fight, in terms of facilities and training pitches, the times of training you have to fend off some of the other teams around the training ground.

“I wasn’t here last year, so I don’t know the full story, but from what I hear, it has improved. But we still have a long way to go, to move to another level. That means players raising themselves to another level. It will be across the board. Arsenal and Man United still have issues, it’s an ongoing issue that we have to deal with, and it’s important that people keep an eye on Birmingham and that they push on with what they said they’d do.”

Quinn, who played for Peamount and UCD before moving abroad in 2013, is used to battling, with memories of the Irish squad’s 2017 strike threat, in response to their treatment by the FAI, still in the memory, despite that recent victory on pay parity.

“It’s not about the amount of money, it’s about the equal opportunities that you can get at international football. For us to be able to represent our country as best we can,” she says, Quinn eager for the World Cup qualifiers next month, where Ireland start away to Sweden.

“Players had to take holidays to play (for Ireland), and we lost so many good players along the way, having to take their holidays to come away on international duty, having unpaid holidays, and some people weren’t able to do both, to play their football in Ireland and play for the international team. A lot of that was pre-2017, as what happened then was a massive step forward.

“That was one of the many points we had, and it was a very important one as through the years we lost so many incredibly talented players, because it wasn’t in any way financially possible. When I was only starting, even with the U-19 team, we used to get a per diem, you’d get €20 a day, and €30 a day with the senior team. For me, as a teenager, that was amazing. Looking at it now, it was nothing, but even that was taken away for six/seven years.

“We sat on it for a while, but we had to take matters into our own hands in 2017, and we have to keep pushing on for more, to keep wanting improvements.

“And we can’t just stop now.”