On Friday, NJ/NY Gotham FC midfielder Sinead Farrelly announced she has retired from the sport, following a season-ending injury due to post concussive syndrome. There was no single incident or injury that resulted in the decision, but Farrelly was advised by a neurologist to stop playing because of the impact of cumulative head injuries over the course of her career.
“I’m leaving this sport in such a different place than I obviously was before, and want to share how positive this ending has been,” Farrelly told The Athletic on Thursday. “I’m feeling so at peace and grateful for my experience, and I’m just lucky that I even had this opportunity to do this again.”
That’s not to say Farrelly isn’t sad about the ending, how it came sooner than she expected, but mostly what she’s feeling is peace. She trusts her doctors, knows it’s the right call, but Farrelly wants to make sure the way she feels about this decision is shared. “I don’t have any negative feelings about it. I’m feeling so grateful, and I just want that to be seen and felt because I think with my history, it can be taken that other way.”
That history, for Farrelly, ended up changing the league and the sport itself — a process still unfolding three years later. Farrelly and her teammate Mana Shim were the key players in an extensive investigation into former North Carolina Courage coach Paul Riley, who was accused of sexual coercion and harassment spanning multiple teams and leagues dating back to 2010. Their story, along with others, resulted in two in-depth external investigations, policy changes, and sweeping changes to the league’s culture and ownership.
The Athletic’s investigation into what Farrelly called the “institutional betrayal” of the NWSL was published in September 2021. By July 2022, Farrelly had decided she wanted to play soccer again, starting to run and lift again, hiring a trainer, starting to play pick-up. But a return to the same league wasn’t a certainty.
“I wasn’t sure I wanted to play in this league again,” Farrelly said Thursday. “When I was like, ‘I’m gonna try and play professionally,’ I wasn’t sure it was going to be here and I was really hesitant about coming back here. I didn’t know how I would be accepted, and I had my own wounds with the league and with everything.”
The journey she went on with Gotham FC over the past 14 months after officially being signed to her first NWSL contract in nearly eight years, however, was a second chance that no one could have anticipated and resulted in a NWSL championship win and a debut then World Cup roster spot with the Ireland women’s national team.
“It’s so fun to look back, because my headspace was so different in a lot of ways than how it is now,” Farrelly said. “I was totally along for the ride, and more so coming from a place of — I felt like I had no control.”
She said she didn’t know what to expect from her return to the sport, to the league, balancing feeling the pressure of the moment but trying to give herself the grace to simply exist. She was battling against her patterns of perfectionism, dealing with unhealed wounds.
“I’m dealing with all of this as it’s happening, and it felt more like this battle of my self doubt, my insecurities, my wounds that I was facing every day. While it was so amazing, it felt really difficult because there were things I had to work through along the way,” she said.
While Farrelly worried she wouldn’t be accepted by the NWSL, instead, she (and eventually her reunited teammate Mana Shim, who also signed with Gotham FC in 2023) was met with an immense level of support, from Red Bull Arena to Providence Park.
“I can be more in touch with it now, because it was hard to experience it while it was happening in real time. But there was no doubt of the support we had. I was able to come back last year and stay with it and continue to show up every day because of the support, whether it was through Gotham, through the staff, through Juan (Carlos Amoros, Gotham’s head coach), through my teammates, through the fans, people reaching out to me that I’ve never met.”
Farrelly said that support makes her think of all the people that had fought for her and Shim when their stories were first shared in 2021. “That was the same support, those were the same people that were fighting for us, the same people that were welcoming us back with open arms and rooting for us,” she said. “Just incredible. I can’t really even put it into words.”
By August 2023, the energy around Gotham was already carrying the weight of something special — an inevitability. In August, Farrelly and Shim were already promising they’d be chatting again at the championship, a prediction that proved true even as Gotham had to sneak into the playoffs on Decision Day, before defeating both the North Carolina Courage and the Portland Thorns on the road.
Victory in Portland. 🖤 pic.twitter.com/NPG2oAYD8K
— NJ/NY Gotham FC (@GothamFC) November 6, 2023
This week, Farrelly said that the time around the 2023 Championship in San Diego is the memory she’ll hold dearest from this second chance. “I remember feeling so much joy, freedom and fun, the energy of our team at practices and stuff. I remember, we weren’t even practicing that well, and there were times people were like, ‘Guys, we have to be better, we have to pick it up.’ But we were feeling goofy, you know what I mean? We were just feeling good. There’s something about that energy in that week that I will always remember.”
She was partnered up with Shim that week in the hotel, there was the beach, nice dinners, the fact that the NWSL has turned the Championship into a legitimate event, something Farrelly hadn’t experienced in the early days of the league.
They got their ending, even if the ending was slightly more chaotic than they could have expected, with starting goalkeeper Mandy Haught ejected in the dying minutes of the match and defender Nealy Martin pressed into service to take over goalkeeping duties. Farrelly was the one to help Martin get the goalkeeper jersey on, though they struggled as Martin had already put the gloves on, with Rose Lavelle waiting over the ball for a free kick that had the potential to send the championship into extra time.
Farrelly still sounded giddy when she talked about those final moments. “I’m laughing. I laugh when I’m nervous, in very uncomfortable situations, it’s not acceptable,” she said. “There is no way. I could tell our team was just like, there is no way this is going to overtime. We can’t physically go any longer. It just can’t end this way.”
The team was praying for the whistle after Lavelle sent the free kick off the wall. “Just absolute chaos,” Farrelly recalled. “But that’s what our story was like, too. I feel like we were a drama and there was no other way to finish that game. So really, it was exactly meant to be.”
As special as that season was, it also provided a foundation for Farrelly moving forward into the 2024 season.
“It wasn’t until when I came back this year that I’ve been able to really be along for the ride, but feeling so stable and who I am and just healed in a lot of ways,” she said. “I worked through so much of the stuff that I needed to work through last year, just even the normal pressures of being in this culture. I just felt like I could show up every day in my own energy, and I was happy. I was coming to practice happy whether I was injured, not injured, whether I was playing, not playing, and it wasn’t dictated by soccer, it wasn’t dictated by these external things. I had to work through so much of that last year, while all the highs were happening at the same time, it’s like a roller coaster of highs and lows. I learned so much having this year. It’s been this steady ability to reflect on the year, reflect on my journey, and just be filled with so much gratitude and joy that just didn’t feel as accessible to me last year.”
“She is someone who is so special,” Gotham head coach Juan Carlos Amorós said on Friday after the announcement. “She gave me, and I think most extensively to her teammates and to the staff that has been in touch with her, a different perspective of the game, of life, the way to approach problems, the way to approach difficult times, how to enjoy the good times – and, you know, she’s been such an important part of obviously last year, the team that won the championship.”
He added: “We can talk here for ages, because she really deserves it, and now it’s a question of how we go into this next stage, where she knows already that she’s part of our squad ’til the end of the year. And then after that, whatever she needs, is gonna be, you know – She’s Gotham. So, whatever she needs, I’m sure that club will deal with for her because her legacy, as I say, is endless. It’s a mix of feelings.”
So. What’s next? Farrelly laughed when asked about at least starting with a vacation in the short term, but mentioned she’s been spending plenty of time out in nature while going through the recovery process for the last few weeks.
“My future is so open right now and uncertain. This soccer chapter feels officially closed, because before, it wasn’t for me, there were just so many unresolved things. So it really is the first time in my life — even though I was away from the game for so many years — that it feels closed. I feel like I’m getting to exist in the space. What is out there?”
She’s open to going beyond soccer, beyond sports. She wants to experience everything. She doesn’t know if that exploration will bring her back to soccer, but it will always be a part of who she is. When Farrelly says she doesn’t have an idea what comes next, she ends that statement with a laugh full of joy.
“To me, that feels almost like a surrender thing, out of my control in a lot of ways. I want to keep saying yes to the call. So if it brings me back, it brings me back, and if it takes me far away, then I trust that is also the path.”
(Photo: Sarah Stier/Getty Images)