by Oliver Brown, Telegraph
(Photo: Unsplash)
Upcoming Nations League matches have become a moral purity test but expose the Irish to accusations of selective outrage
A disturbing delirium has crept over Ireland at the prospect of facing Israel on a football pitch. All day its team agonised on the eve of the match in Debrecen, eastern Hungary, prolonging a national nervous breakdown that has worsened in the seven months since the draw was made. As if anti-Israeli sentiment in the country were not frenzied enough, with Ed Sheeran’s songs banned by a major Irish radio station in protest at the singer’s removal of a support act for pro-Palestinian diatribes, activists have pressurised their own players, calling on them not to fulfil two fixtures against what they describe as a “genocidal state”. In this tinderbox atmosphere, goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu decided he no longer wanted any part of it.
Several team-mates approved his preference for a boycott, before a majority eventually voted in favour of the game taking place. Amid scenes of utter chaos, with nobody sure if the team bus parked outside the hotel would head to the stadium or straight back to the airport, Ireland’s training session began over five hours later than planned. Not that the furore will abate either this weekend or next. The subject has become an obsession, a moral purity test, creating a climate of intimidation so acute that the “home” match next weekend has had to be moved to a small Serbian town, with the hosts unable to guarantee their opponents’ safety on Irish soil.