Head bowed: best to keep it that way for quite a while

The image of the Ireland players staring at the pitch as the Israelis sang their national anthem went around the world in an instant. 

The Ireland team during the Israel national anthem. Pic: INPHO

Heads bowed, rightly.

There will be many images which Irish football brings home from Debrecen. Most they’d prefer to leave in the dust of Hungary’s second city. But they can’t.

The sight of all 11 Ireland players staring at the turf as Israelis sang their national anthem went around the world in an instant. Given the slow-drip then relentless rush of ignominy that led the national team to that very moment, it was a vision which was so easy to package just as instantly: Heads bowed…in shame.

But maybe there was something else to the gesture. Fulfilling a Nations League match which never should have been, the starting XI who’ll go down in history lowered eyes to the ground. Perhaps because somewhere out there in the darkness of Sunday night was a teammate who they couldn’t look in the face.

Right up until kickoff, you wondered if they would really do it, really leave Gavin Bazunu isolated? History will remember where Bazunu stood when teammates lowered their heads. Quite literally he was back in The Mercure Hotel. But in the wider, deeper and lasting sense he was alone on the clifftop, objecting against this disgrace all by himself.

How did no one step up in solidarity with Bazunu?

Through reports we know that Saturday's “significant majority” which FAI CEO David Courell tried to mislead the public on was in fact an apparent 14-8 vote in favour of fulfilling the fixture. That not a single one of the eight Ireland players who voted to boycott the game on its eve didn’t then join their team-mate who was actually doing so feels sure to be one of the most lasting stains of this fog-of-war window.

Even with Troy Parrott, Adam Idah and Jack Moylan getting Heimir Hallgrimson’s side off to a rapid start in Debrecen there is so much which cannot be outrun.

When the Ireland Football Twitter account posted a graphic of Sunday’s starting XI, two things were noteworthy. Sponsors Sky had been removed from the image along with the FAI’s own crest. But the replies which flooded in, over 1200 by kickoff, spoke of a fundamental fracture between nation and national team.

“Let the whole country down…Absolute cowards…First time in my life I’m ashamed of the Ireland football team…We’re all with Gavin…Disgusting team with no morals…Fucking shitebags…Shame.” 

On and on it went. At some point an FAI staffer may have had the good mind to turn off comments altogether. That would have been cowardly but on brand.

Social media is, of course, no reliable barometer but its true depth will be learned in more detail at Lansdowne Road on Thursday night for the game against Austria. It is just one crack down the middle of Irish international football however.

The other fissure feels arguably even more consequential: the one brought about by the FAI hierarchy whose inaction then fumbling panicked actions fundamentally split its own camp.

Through that fog of the weekend, and before it too, there were knowns. The most indisputable is this: it should never have come down to the players and it should never have come down to Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This was an almighty clusterf*ck which has sat front and centre, blocking out so much light, since February. Yet UEFA, the Irish government and most especially the FAI failed to act with anything which ever looked like decision or moral clarity.

There is something uniquely on brand about the Football Association of Ireland being presented with what they saw as an unwinnable situation and finding a way to lose even more than anyone could have imagined.

They did let it come down to the players though, then inexplicably failed to canvass Bazunu’s position ahead of time and laid the foundation for fracture with pressured polls of the playing group.

“My decision is based purely on my personal belief that the killing of innocent people is wrong,” Bazunu explained in his statement. Through other leaks we know that staggeringly he was confronted, even “abused” by teammates over this stance.

Even as Hallgrimsson’s unorthodox XI looked as fluid and in-form as they have in the guts of a year in a dominant first-half, there simply cannot be genuine unity in that camp. A couple of reports suggested Finn Azaz is considering his international future. Thursday against Austria and then a rapid reunion with Israel will only shudder and maybe shatter this all further.

The FAI’s mismanagement of the game at home means that dual nationals are a potentially pivotal source of talent. When the country cannot produce a proper holding midfielder for a decade and more there is perhaps one out there. How must any prospective convert look upon that treatment of Bazunu and the clown show across the board from FAI executive, communications staff and Hallgrímsson’s own missteps and think that’s a camp they want to be a part of?

Last November in Budapest, this team relit a fire, reconnected with the country in a way it hadn’t for nearly 10 years. Perhaps more. Back in Hungary 10 months later there may have been another victory on the field but it will go down as Ireland’s most Phyrric.

They’d do well to keep those heads bowed for some time yet.