More than seven years after playing in her last NWSL match, Sinead Farrelly is returning to the league with Gotham FC.
The 33-year-old midfielder joined the New Jersey-based club for the preseason as a non-roster invitee, and she is finalizing a contract with the club ahead of the 2023 season, Gotham FC announced earlier this week.
Farrelly last played in an NWSL regular-season match for the Portland Thorns in 2015. In September 2021, she went public with her experience of sexual abuse at the hands of former Thorns coach Paul Riley.
The allegations made by Farrelly and by her former Thorns teammate Mana Shim prompted the firing of Riley by the North Carolina Courage and the opening of wider abuse investigations by the NWSL and its players association as well as U.S. Soccer.
Farrelly had played under Riley on a semi-pro team, in the Women’s Professional Soccer league and then with the Thorns, and the sexual coercion continued with each team, she told The Athletic.
After the 2015 season with the Thorns, Farrelly was traded to the Boston Breakers, but she sat out the 2016 season with injuries sustained in a car crash. She announced her retirement after the 2016 season.
“It took me years away from the game to gain the awareness of how power imbalance works and to be able to tell people close to me what happened,” she told The Athletic.
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