Treaty United: "I saw a lot of opportunity. Even when I was here as a player, I was excited at the potential of the League of Ireland and Limerick"

One of the most encouraging and exciting developments in the Women’s League of Ireland (WLOI) since its inception in 2011-12 (under the moniker Women’s National League) occurred last season, when Athlone Town won the Premier Division league title. Galway United, meanwhile, secured the All-Island Cup, leaving only the WFAI Cup in Dublin hands, with league runners-up Shelbourne FC.

That the spoils are being shared around the country rather than by teams in the capital also demonstrated that the support of fans and corporate sponsors alike is there nationwide, and driving teams not just to survival – but, in some cases at least, success.

The arrival of Limerick’s Treaty United in 2020 – the men’s team was established the same year – has been another big positive for the WLOI. The club has received serious backing and the women’s team has delivered consistently encouraging performances. Granted, they haven’t set the league on fire, but their on-pitch determination and team spirit have given other teams real cause for concern.

Shelbourne captain, Pearl Slattery, told Hot Press at the end of 2024 season, that Treaty had been one of the toughest teams to beat last year. There was no condescension in that assessment.

With a nice blend of young local and regional talent, and more experienced international ‘imports’, Treaty’s model is a good one. This season it is bearing fruit, with the team spending the first half of the season in the top half of the table (at one point sitting in third place) alongside Athlone and Galway, as well as traditional heavyweight contenders Shelbourne, Peamount United and Wexford FC.

They also reached the quarter-finals of the All-Island Cup, at the expense of Athlone, who finished behind them in their qualifying group.

The omens are there, then, that they may not be far off getting their hands on a trophy. Certainly, finishing the season in the top five or six in the WLOI would be a real signifier of tangible progress for the team and, indeed, the club.

“Absolutely, I think finishing lower than the top half of the table this season would be disappointing,” former player and current Treaty CEO, Ciara McCormack, says. “We’ve an incredible coach in Sean Russell, who lives and breathes football – which is part of why we moved him up from the U17s to the senior team, with his tactical sophistication and his passion.

“We’re also getting in players who maybe left Limerick to go elsewhere and they’re returning. And we’re getting players moving to us from the wider region, and other WLOI clubs. Top players are staying at Treaty now. That was one of our goals.”

Ciara McCormack

There’s another dimension to the story.

“The word is out that we care about our women’s team,” she continues, “and that we have a really good women’s programme. It’s an exciting stage of our development. We have a nice balance between young Irish players and experienced international players. Overall, we’ve got a young squad, with a really good mix. I think it’s just going to get better over the next few years.

“The girls’ programme in terms of the academy teams, the level they are at is unbelievable,” she adds, “with great coaches in place. Great women coaches, too, like Marie Curtin, ex-player Niamh O’Byrne, who’s with the senior team now and doing her UEFA badges, as well as Libby Costelloe, Irene Hehir, and Rebecca Shinnors. All the top young players in the region want to come to Treaty now.”

The journey to this point has not been without its challenges.

“To be honest, we’ve gotten a lot of really negative backlash from within Limerick,” McCormack admits. “It’s like some people view it as a zero-sum game, that if we put money into the women’s team it’s taking away from the Treaty men’s team. Coming from North America, where it’s quite open-minded and everyone sees the commercial value of the women’s game, it’s somewhat surprising still for me to see this layer of misogyny towards the women’s game that people are fighting against.

“We want opportunities for girls in Limerick, especially little girls, and that they are getting the same breaks as the boys are. We’re fighting very deep-seated cultural challenges.”

AGAINST THE GRAIN

One way to make progress in this respect, is via the club’s connection with the community in the Limerick and the western region. In one ongoing initiative, for no charge to local grassroots clubs and schools in the Mid-West, Treaty United will come out ‘for a day/night of football fun’ to grassroots clubs and schools, providing coaching from its senior men’s and/or women’s teams, and also providing the opportunity for Q&As, photographs and autographs.

As part of this, all the aspiring young players receive a free ticket to an upcoming Treaty men’s or women’s fixture. In addition, “A discount code for a €10 adult ticket (normally €17) will be provided to parents, coaches, teachers and club members, along with free hospitality access for senior staff in the club/school (up to four passes)”.

“It’s a big positive,” McCormack reflects, “that clubs can’t get away with not putting any money into the women’s team now, because there are enough clubs that are – and it’s blatantly obvious, even for players who won’t go to certain clubs because they have better options. For us at Treaty, we did have quite a few international players from Canada, and elsewhere, and the spine of the team is still international.

“But now we have the likes of Katie Lawlee, Karen Griffin and Madison McGuane, who are young Limerick-area players, the kind of players who, in previous iterations of Limerick and Treaty, would get thrown in when they were 15 with no mentorship, no guidance and no challenge to fight to even get in a team. I think that’s what’s changed. The standards and level of competition to get in the team and the squad have risen.

“What I really like about the way Sean coaches is that he has a very strong methodology in the way he wants to play. He’s also really good at building camaraderie: the way he is with players is great.”

Katie Lawlee

McCormack is well-placed to make such judgements. Born in Canada to an Athlone father and a Skibereen mother, she won eight caps in defence for Ireland, having played for Canadian, American, Danish, and Norwegian clubs, before joining Treaty United as a player in early 2023. In a remarkable achievement, in October of that year, she was installed as CEO and co-owner, the first woman to hold that distinction in the League of Ireland.

It wasn’t something that just fell into her lap – her business qualifications and experience are considerable, including three Masters degrees. With an impressive business CV, among other roles, she held positions as a Board Member of PFA Canada and founded TOPP Soccer, which assists elite high school athletes, teams, and clubs in securing athletic scholarships – “through consulting, an online platform and high profile soccer events.”

Having joined Treaty as a player, it wasn’t long before she got involved on the business side.

“In parallel with my playing career, I was involved with running businesses for nearly two decades,” she explains. “I did the remote business thing, before it was ever a thing! I did coaching, though, and enjoyed it. I did my UEFA B-Licence in 2013, so I really enjoyed the on-field side of things. But, given my business experience, it made sense to take an opportunity.”

For a long time, Limerick LOI clubs have struggled to survive, so the prospect of getting involved with a relatively new club like Treaty United was a challenge. Add in a new women’s team, and the idea of running the club in its entirety – men’s and women’s – must have been daunting.

“I saw a lot of opportunity. Even when I was here as a player, I was excited at the potential of the League of Ireland and Limerick,” she says. “I could see the possibilities and how the game has grown, but I wanted us to be sustainable. I think we’re approaching things in a very measured kind of way. That might not be the ‘sexy’ way to do things for some people, who want to see money splashed about, maybe in an irresponsible way.

“That may have been the way in the past here, and in some other clubs throughout the league. So the challenge has been to go against the grain and say: ‘that way has not worked previously. We’re going to do it in a way that the club is going to be here for the long haul’. You just have to learn to develop thick-skin and to not be the most popular person.

“We’ve taken flak – but we know we’re doing the right thing. I was a player and I could see first-hand when I came in 2023 that the WLOI was heading in a professional direction. It’s really incredible that volunteers brought it so far here in Limerick. It’s such an all-consuming job, and I could see there was a struggle to keep things at a certain level.

“So I approached the board and said, ‘Would you guys be open to investment or a take-over, if I was able to find someone who’d be interested?’ And they said they would. That’s when I went out to seek investment and made the connection with TriCorps Pacific Capital. I had gone to university with one of the family members of TriCorps, so that was a natural avenue to pursue.”

Having Athlone and West Cork parents, one might well ask ‘Why Limerick?’

“I was interested in doing something with a League of Ireland team a few years previously, and I was looking at West Cork as a potential area, on the women’s football side of things,” says McCormack. “When I talked to the League, though, they said they were aiming more towards full set-ups, as in full men’s, women’s and academy teams, so you couldn’t just do a stand-alone women’s senior side.

“They said there were two clubs that needed assistance on the women’s side in Munster: one of whom was Treaty United. Marie Curtin, who I knew from the Ireland national team, was at Treaty already as Chief Operating Officer, so that’s how I ended up in Limerick.”

Treaty United COO Marie Cutin, Mayor of Limerick John Moran & Ciara McCormack

Having been a player in the WLOI, how does she think it’s developing? It seems healthy, with players coming in from abroad (notably from the US and Canada) to play, and who feel they can make a contribution to playing standards here.

“Absolutely,” she agrees. “I think the playing standard in the WLOI has improved and I think the professionalism and how the league is marketed has improved. Commercially, more attention and focus needs to be placed on it. In the sense that there’s a lot of multinational companies  I’ve spoken to, even through our interactions with Treaty, who are interested in elite, national level exposure.

“My understanding is that there’s not a dedicated commercial person with the league in general – I think that’s a big missed opportunity. We have a very international league, a very diverse league, you have women’s soccer exploding throughout the world… It’s been great having international players coming in. And, even in Treaty, we have players who played with us, and they are now playing in the US and Canadian leagues, so it’s very positive.

“I think the WLOI is very interesting this year,” she concludes, “with all the player movements, and managerial changes, that happened in the off-season.”

Talking with her, one can’t help wondering if Ciara McCormack is the sort of ambitious and ‘driven’ professional that is needed at national level to advance and promote the women’s game in Ireland and take it up to the next level. Currently, she’s a huge asset to Treaty United, a side that’s finally competing for trophies.

Now, that’s progress.

Paul O’Mahony highlights five WLOI contenders for inclusion in the Ireland national women’s squad here