The final whistle blew and the Irish and Israeli players picked up their heads to seek their team-mates, melting into one another without shaking hands with any opponent with whom they crossed. This was the final piece of planned protest by the Irish players but the part about which nobody had thought to ask about in advance.
There had been such furious, rancorous contention as to whether the game should start at all, perhaps it was impossible to picture its ending. The Irish players have certainly lived a week which they thought might never have an end. The game proceeded without additional controversy but of course the contention is that it started at all.
A day earlier, the game truly teetered on the edge of not happening.
The players had a meeting in Pristina on Friday at which they intended to come to a collective agreement regarding how to handle the prematch protocol against Israel. An 11th-hour boycott was not on the agenda.
READ MORE
After a lengthy and fraught exchange of views, the players left Kosovo believing they had a collective stance. They intended to communicate it to the public via a statement, but it required unanimous approval from the players before publication.
Gavin Bazunu declined to sign the player statement on Friday night, and on Saturday morning he told Heimir Hallgrímsson he did not wish to play against Israel but would remain available for next Thursday’s game against Austria.
With Bazunu withdrawing, the players felt their agreement to remain as a collective had been undermined. Now, on the eve of the game, the players felt they were back to square one, and those who committed to playing against their own instincts were now reconsidering their stance.
The players met among themselves for hours, also speaking with the FAI, Hallgrímsson, and the coaching staff. After around three hours of talks, a member of the backroom team suggested the players should hold a ballot among themselves to break the deadlock and gauge the sentiment in the room. The question was whether to play the game, and it was an anonymous vote. Players cast their votes by writing “Yes” or “No” on a scrap of paper. Bazunu was not present. The vote returned a majority to play.
This sentiment was communicated to the FAI, including president Paul Cooke and chief executive David Courell, both of whom were present in the hotel, but in a separate room. It was suggested that the players then conduct another vote, with the context of knowing the sentiment among the squad.
They were told the FAI would use the result of this second vote to inform their decision whether to press ahead with the game. The second vote saw the gap between the “Yes” and “No” sides narrow further. The FAI said they had a “significant majority” in favour of playing, and thus decided to proceed with the game. The FAI have refused to confirm the result of the vote, with Brian Kerr saying on Virgin Media TV it was 14-8, without Bazunu’s vote.
Whatever sense of solidarity the squad felt they had when flying to Hungary was now apparently sundered, as the public now knew that the FAI were pressing ahead with the game with a matchday squad featuring an unconfirmed number of players who had voted not to play the game.
Bazunu, meanwhile, remained with the squad, still available to play Austria. The FAI, however, had to nominate three goalkeepers in the matchday squad to be submitted to Uefa by midnight, and so centre-back Jimmy Dunne was named as a goalkeeper.
It was an inglorious echo of Italia ‘90, when Niall Quinn was named as the squad’s third-choice goalkeeper.
There were not supposed to be any Irish fans in the ground, though some had travelled to Debrecen. In a bizarre quirk of fate, some of the travelling Irish media, including The Irish Times have been staying in the Israeli team hotel.
A handful of Irish fans have also been in the same hotel, and as we departed for the match, two fans wearing Irish jerseys walked through the lobby, telling us their tickets had been cancelled. Moments later, an Israeli player sauntered towards the lifts in a pair of sliders, his hair wet from a trip to the pool. The accredited media in attendance included former Minister of Justice Alan Shatter.
And so at 7.54pm at the Nagyerdei Stadium in Debrecen, Caoimhín Kelleher and Max O’Leary trooped out with the Ireland goalkeeper coach to begin their warm-up. Dunne was not with them: he followed a few minutes later with the rest of the outfield players.
As they emerged, the boos of the 100-odd Israel fans in the stadium echoing eerily around the empty arena. The travelling FAI delegation sat separately from their Israeli counterparts, sitting in plastic bucket seats five rows from the front. The Israeli FA delegation sat scattered across the plush seats of the director’s box towards the back of the stand. The FAI delegation would provide the Irish support, lustily roaring approval of good moments of Irish play. Courell roared “Come on Ireland” in praise of one early tackle.
By the time Troy Parrott scored the opening goal, however, there were sounds of “Parrott again olé olé” bouncing from the stand: nine plain-clothes Irish fans had materialised in the stand, not a hint of green among them. When Jack Moylan scored Ireland’s third goal he kissed the crest and gestured it towards the Irish fans.
Hallgrímsson did not emerge into view until approximately midway through the Irish players’ warm-up, cutting a somewhat distant figure, drifting with arms folded around the edges of the player warm-ups, still looking like a man carried away on unforeseen tides. By the time the game kicked off, however, the manager snapped into action, his hoarse roars ringing around the ground.
The Irish substitutes ran through a lengthier warm-up than the starting team, and as they made their way back into the dressingroom, one player cast a long look at the Irish journalists in the stand and shook his head.
The pre-match protocols progressed as expected. The Ireland players emerged wearing black armbands and stood to face the tricolour for the Irish anthem. When the Israeli anthem played, the Irish players and the FAI delegation stood with their heads bowed.
The Israeli players did not offer their hands for handshake as they had said they would: instead both sets of teams split in opposite directions. The Irish players did not pose for a team photograph, and captain Dara O’Shea stood with the Israeli captain for the coin toss, his hands clasped behind his back.
O’Shea returned to his team-mates to tell them to switch sides. The Irish squad lined up in their respective positions, and then the whistle blew.
