Katie McCabe has described the latest round of allegations of misconduct against Ireland manager Vera Pauw as “a real negative distraction” ahead of Ireland’s World Cup campaign.
The Athletic carried a piece this week with unnamed former Houston Dash players and staff members.
Speaking under the condition of anonymity, they made claims that Pauw engaged in controlling behaviour and made comments about players’ size, weight and what they were eating.
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Pauw refuted each claim in the lengthy article - and speaking ahead of Thursday’s friendly against France she described the allegations as “a lie.”
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Arsenal and Ireland skipper McCabe said: “Of course it’s a real negative distraction.
“But for us, we’re solely focusing on what we have going forward, a game against one of the top five teams in the world in France.
“(It’s) a massive send-off game in front of our fans that I wasn’t able to play two weeks ago so I’m looking forward to leading the girls out.
“And we’ve got a massive four or five weeks ahead of us in Australia.
“Of course, it’s a lot of external noise but our full focus is on the next few weeks and keeping together as a group.”
McCabe was asked if the group was fully behind their manager.
She replied: “Yeah, we’ve built something over the last two or three years. We’ve worked really hard together to contain the culture we have within the group in terms of on and off the pitch.
“We’ve had highs and lows on and off the pitch and our jobs as staff and players is to put in high quality performances for our country and that’s what we’ll be looking to do for the next four weeks.”
McCabe added: “The timing of course isn’t great. We’ve obviously went through it back in December.
“Obviously it's something we've spoken about but ultimately we've got a game tomorrow so our sole focus has to be fine tuned in on that.
“The timing of the release of the article, it is what it is. 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 it takes the sting out of it from the team’s point of view.”
She added that there were times when she had rows with Pauw.
“Of course Vera has a style of management that we're used to now over the last two years,” said McCabe.
“It’s something we've worked on together. We’ve argued with each other of course. You're never going to get on 100 percent 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 and then obviously kicking off our first ever World Cup.”
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