With her time in charge of Houston Dash once again under the microscope, Republic of Ireland manager Vera Pauw robustly defended herself in a tense press conference on Wednesday afternoon.
The Girls in Green face world No 5-ranked France at Tallaght Stadium tomorrow night before flying to Australia for their first ever appearance at a World Cup.
However, Pauw currently finds herself in the eye of a fresh storm after an article published in The Athletic on Monday reopened a wound that's festered since the winter time.
Back in December the Dutch woman was named in a report which alleged that while manager of Houston Dash from November 2017 to September 2018 she shamed players for their weight and attempted to exert excessive control over their eating habits.
At the time Pauw said she denied every allegation made against her.
A month later she was among eight coaches sanctioned by National Women's Soccer League [NWSL] as part of their corrective action in response to the findings of the report. Her future employment in the NWSL is conditional on acknowledging misconduct, participating in training, and demonstrating a sincere commitment to correcting behaviour.
Pauw responded to those sanctions by saying she had been in contact with Iowa-based employment, discrimination, and civil rights lawyer Thomas Newkirk and vowed to fully clear her name.
On Monday, The Athletic published a lengthy piece chronicling Pauw's time at Houston Dash, with four ex-players and three former members of staff all interviewed under the cover of anonymity. One player described her methods as "abusive and inappropriate"; another said she "created a culture of fear".
Pauw, who was also interviewed for the piece, claims she received a death threat from a member of the Houston Dash staff after she switched training to the evening to avoid the daytime heat. "He threatened to shoot me in the head as I was taking his beer night away," she said, adding that she got police protection until the situation was resolved.
At the pre-match press conference in Dublin today, the piece dominated discussion.
"And this distraction, the timing of this is wrong. And the allegations are false. That is all I want to say."
"It's the same story as in December," said Pauw. "It is something of a few anonymous players and how can you defend yourself against a lie?
"I'm afraid it will follow me during my life and that has been the agenda.
"Of course I have spoken to the leading [Ireland] players and they all said, they came individually to me and said they have my back. I have asked specifically if they have ever experienced anything. And they said no, never.
"We are going to a World Cup. It is so fantastic. We have worked so hard to get there. They do everything to be ready.
"And this distraction, the timing of this is wrong. The allegations are false. That is all I want to say."
Sitting to Pauw's left was her captain Katie McCabe. The Arsenal star was asked if every member of the squad was satisfied with Pauw's response to the allegations, replying: "I can't answer for each and every player. Of course Vera has a style of management that we're used to now over the last two years.
"It's something we've worked together, we’ve argued with each other of course. You're never going to get on 100% with your manager at times. She pushes me and I push her.
"In my opinion and from my personal relationship with Vera, of course, we've clashed many a times but we’re always professional enough to make sure we are fully focused for the team.
"We know both of our hearts are in the right place in terms of what works best for the Ireland women’s national team going forward. And again, of course the article timing is not great but our full focus will be France tomorrow and then going into Colombia next week [in Brisbane] and then obviously kicking off our first ever World Cup."
Pauw denied that she approached The Athletic a few months ago to urge them to take a closer look at the Houston Dash story, although she did again stress her belief that there are "double standards" when it comes to how female and male coaches are viewed.
"I was flabbergasted that this was coming back to me," she said. "The only sentence that I said was, 'when are you going to deal with the double standards of female coaches?' That’s the only thing I asked.
"I had to answer [when approached for comment by The Athletic]. I did not want to answer. I said, 'I'm not going to answer this’ because they were doing the same thing and getting the same allegations in instead of going to the double standards.
"I did not want to answer but then they said, ‘oh well we’re going to write it anyway’. I’ve got a whole list of proof of support from players of Houston Dash of what happened that was not used, so there was an agenda."
McCabe aired her frustration that discussion was being dominated by the issue rather the team's looming debut at the tournament.
"The timing of course isn't great," she said of The Athletic article. "We obviously went through it back in December. It's something we've spoken about but ultimately we've got a game tomorrow so our sole focus has to be finetuned in on that.
"It's obviously frustrating because this is such a massive time in Ireland for women's football. It's frustrating to see that we can't be here talking about our massive send-off game tomorrow and the fact that we're heading to our first major tournament.
"I know we’ll touch on that but of course takes the sting out of it from the team’s point of view."
That may be the case, but this story will undoubtedly hang over Pauw, and the Ireland camp, for some time yet.
Watch Republic of Ireland v France on Thursday night from 7.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on RTÉ.ie/Sport and the RTÉ News app or listen to live commentary on an extended Game On with 2fm
