The tattoo on her right arm reminds her of a very Irish trait.
It reads, ‘One day, you will learn how to give and receive love like an open window and it will feel like summer every day’.
Sinead Farrelly, a Pennsylvania-born addition to Ireland’s World Cup squad, explains that she is “a very guarded person, and so I want to be more open and vulnerable, to receive.”
“I feel like Irish people have a hard time with that, if I am thinking about my dad.”
Dad Sean, a Cavan native and “a man of few words,” according to Farrelly.
The midfielder, who tried a bit of Gaelic football in the States before committing to the 11-a-side game, has strong reasons for raising her guard.
She withdrew into herself for several years after a car accident robbed her of six years of her football career.
Fortunately, the physical injuries, which included concussion and whiplash, eventually healed.
The mental scars from sexual coercion at the hands of her former coach Paul Riley, which she revealed in a 2021 interview, won’t fade so quickly.
But she is in a much better place these days, than when she had the tattoo inked onto her in Portland a few years ago.
Vera Pauw has made little secret of the fact that Farrelly has come from nowhere to being a crucial part of her World Cup plan.
Rewind to that 2015 accident and the 33-year-old recalled: “At that point I thought I had to give up soccer and I could never get it back.
“I had concussion and whiplash. I couldn’t work out so I couldn’t do a lot of cardio or anything.
“They know so much more now about concussion than they did back then, but I basically did nothing. So I lost all my muscle really fast.
“I ended up having a lot of health issues at the time too. It was just really debilitating. I didn’t feel like myself for four and half years.
“I had really bad brain fog. I was like a shell of myself. I didn’t think I would ever feel normal again. Every day I thank God that I feel like myself now. It is crazy.”
Farrelly returned to senior football in March of this year. During her near-eight-year absence, she reckons she might have had a kickabout on 10 occasions.
“There was one season where my friend got me to jump into an over-45s men’s league a few times,” she recalled.
“Every time I played I would feel really bad. My body was compensating, and I was going from nothing to trying to jump into a game.
“I had all this evidence that my body couldn’t play soccer. It furthered my belief that I couldn’t do it.”
The abuse - a weight on her that only started to lift when she finally told her story - added another layer of stress on Farrelly.
“The car accident was a very physical thing. Every day I questioned whether my body could do this. It gave me a lot of anxiety,” she said.
“I think the abuse was more psychological. It has been everything. It has been hard. But, like, amazing. Beautiful. A parallel to what life is like.
“But, definitely, it has been very, very difficult.”
The anxiety remains. To the extent that she is mortified by the fact that she is heading to the World Cup with a broken hand; an injury from a recent game with NY/NJ Gotham.
“I am more embarrassed that I have to wear a cast in games, but it will be fine,” she said.
Farrelly continues to see a psychologist.
“I know where I am physically, I am good enough to be here, but mentally it has been really challenging,” she said.
“I still get really bad performance anxiety. I’m so afraid of messing up and letting people down. It has been a battle but I want to overcome it.
“It is not going to stop me. I am not going to quit. I just got to figure out how to keep going.
“And honestly, I want to talk about it more because I think a lot of people struggle with it.
“I just want people to know even at this level I have wanted to qut so many times, just not show up, but I do it anyways. It’s good to know it is possible.”
She added: “I think a lot of what I went through caused a lot of anxiety for me.
“I see a therapist, I speak to a sports psychologist, anyone that is willing to help me!
“Please listen to me. Like, help me, fix me!”
Meg Linehan was the journalist that broke Farrelly’s story and the midfielder remains grateful to this day for the opportunity to speak out.
“There were a lot of people before me that were not heard,” she said.
“It is definitely a privilege to have the people around me, like Meg, the right people to just cover it and come out with that story. It was perfect timing.”
As for the words inked onto her arm, is she any closer to letting her guard down?
“I want so bad to not be an anxious person. Like, be cool but I am just fuckin’ not. I am not cool. I am not chill,” she said.
“The acceptance is really helpful. This is just who I am. Whatever.”
