Former professional footballer Ciara McCormack is the first female CEO of a League of Ireland Club. She spoke to Oliver Callan about her career, her new job and exposing abuse in Canadian sport. Listen back above.
Back in 2022, former professional footballer Ciara McCormack was on holiday in Thailand, when she got the call to take up a leadership position in Limerick's Treaty United. The Canadian born player was taken by the idea, even though at that point, it hadn’t occurred to her to move to Ireland, as she tells Oliver Callan:
"Ireland wasn’t even on my radar. And then, like a year and a half later, I’m sitting talking to you and I’m the CEO of Treaty United, living in Limerick."
Growing up in Canada with Irish parents – her Dad's from Athlone and her Mum is from Cork – the new role is a kind of home-coming for the CEO, who took the reins in October last year. Ciara says she has high hopes for Limerick city’s only professional mens’ and womens’ football team:
"I really truly believe in Treaty, I believe in the City of Limerick. I believe in the League of Ireland. I just see there is so much immense possibility."
With a footballing career in Canada, Norway, the US and Ireland, Ciara says the Irish passport gave her great freedom, especially at a very difficult point of her playing career. In the early 2000s, she was made aware of abusive behaviour towards female players by the Canadian Under-20s team coach Bob Birarda. Ciara chose to speak out about what was going on; but then in 2007, she decided it was time to get away from Canada for a while:
"I ended up leaving Canada in 2007, just because of increasingly inappropriate things going on. I guess it was lucky, if you want to call it luck that I had an Irish passport and I kind of knew that you get black-balled in those situations. And I knew that if that happened to me, I could still play for Ireland."
It took several years for the survivors to finally get justice, Ciara says. She and others had been trying to get the story out for years:
"Basically for 10 years, there was a group of three or four of us that went to the media, police, soccer organisations. We counted it up and over 30 different people we tried to report it to."
In 2019, frustrated with the lack of progress, Ciara ended up blowing the whistle on Birarda in a blog post, which went viral:
"I just kind of had enough and basically wrote this blog and published it. The thing went viral and to make a long story short, a bunch of victims came forward and so he ended up being convicted of sex crimes against four former teenage players over a 20-year period."
The years leading up to Birarda's arrest and conviction were tough, Ciara says:
"I guess you can say I saw the dark side of sport"
Ciara says there is an inevitable power imbalance where very young athletes are in a bubble, dedicated to their sport, and this can leave them vulnerable. Until justice took its course, she says, she and others were left out in the cold:
"Most people who stand up against somebody who has power, so usually, the end game is getting black-balled."
The publicity surrounding the story paved the way for whistleblowers in other sports to tell their stories, Ciara says:
"Once our story came out, and there was this proliferation of so many different sports across the country; just all kinds of horrific stories going on in Canadian sport."
The coach got less than 2 years in prison for his offences, a sentence which Ciara says might have been greater in other jurisdictions, like the US. She says the fact that the events came to a head provided some comfort to players:
"I think there’s a lot of healing when you just realise you’re part of a collective, as opposed to feeling like you some isolated troublemaker speaking out about stuff."
Ciara has spoken in front of two parliamentary committees in Ottawa on safety in sport. She says change is happening, but it is slow:
"You’re dealing with these massive systems – You’re dealing with a lot of money, power; people who will lose by having structures changing. "
Ciara says she’s so happy to be starting a new chapter of her life and take everything she’s learned and to make something positive out of it. She recalls great memories of her time playing for Ireland in 2008 - 2010:
"What I came out of, I had a lot of gratitude in my experience with Ireland. And obviously, it’s amazing now being in Limerick. Ireland is a place that I am so grateful for and a chance to give back to soccer her and move forward, really."
Ciara is putting a lot of time and effort into developing up-and-coming talent at Treaty United. She’s also brought some Canadian players over to join the womens’ side. Ciara is excited and optimistic looking ahead to 2025, when Ireland’s women face a very strong group in the Euro qualifiying games:
"There’s just so much talent coming through the ranks. I just think it’s a great reflection of how far the women’s game has come in Ireland over the last bunch of years, that that’s the level of teams we are in groups with. I think it’s a huge positive."
If you’re affected by any of the issues that came up in this interview, click here for helpline information.
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