Back to reality for Ireland after a night of something approaching normality

Heimir Hallgrimsson applaudes the fans with his players after the game. Pic Ben McShane/Sportsfile

You heard them before you saw them. That unmistakeable sound of a voice projecting through a loudspeaker. The group chant. The sound of cars honking in support as they drove past the intersection of Northumberland Road and Pembroke Road.

And then you saw them. The Palestinian flags, the banners, the keffiyehs. There was maybe 70 or 80 people standing, somewhat symbolically, on a traffic island as a flood of humanity filed past at a distance and on its way to the Aviva Stadium.

There, but apart.

Another small cluster of ‘Stop The Game’ protestors had taken residence on the Sandymount side of the stadium from mid-afternoon. They made their opinions known as the Ireland team coach passed them by on arrival at six o’clock.

Others passed out leaflets with their objections explained on one side and Palestinian flags printed on the other. Curious commuters stopped and stared on their way home from work as photographers clad in Uefa bibs captured it all unfold.

Two fan protests stopped play in the first-half with tennis balls raining down from all four corners and a lone protestor being bundled off the pitch by eight no-nonsense interceptors as he struggled to unfold a Palestinian flag.

The security cordon around the stadium had been stretched beyond the norm and supported by a second inner ring of metal barriers and men in yellow high-vis jackets. Garda vans and Gardai lined most of Lansdowne Road itself.

The media had to pass through airport-style security.

All of this was very familiar to anyone who took in the Irish Open in Doonbeg earlier this month, when Donald Trump’s peacocking squeezed €20m out of the Irish taxpayer’s pocket and the US president stole the show from Shane Lowry.

No, this was never going to be a ‘normal’ night. It couldn’t. The shadow of Sunday’s return with Israel in Serbia still hangs over this team and this window, and the reality of it will dominate thoughts and news cycles again over the next three days.

The FAI had announced a full house for this game on the morning of the game. It was far from that – 45,784 the official attendance - so it’s fair to assume that at least some of those empty seats were left unused out of principle.

Austria's Michael Gregoritsch smashed in a brilliant free-kick to break Irish hearts. Pic: Brian Lawless/PA

The big unknown was how would those present would greet and treat their team.

Ireland made their entrance pitchside 41 minutes before kick-off. It was no litmus test for what was to come. Only a few hundred home fans were dotted around the stands and the usual pre-match music was blaring away in the background.

The song playing as they jogged out? ‘What Do You Want From Me’. Some things you can’t make up. Here, in one Hollywood-style snapshot, was the nub of the issue that haunted this team last weekend and will again in three days’ time.

To play, or not to play.

Whatever about Sunday gone and Sunday to come, people here mostly wanted to watch some football.

The past week had been so toxic, so divisive in so many ways, so draining even from afar, that there was a painfully obvious hunger to leave Debrecen and Wednesday’s Oireachtas committee to one side and, hopefully, be entertained.

And entertained they were.

It’s a bewildering irony that Ireland went out and beat Israel 3-0 in Hungary. Heimir Hallgrimsson has stated baldly this last week that preparations have been awful and the strains unbearable. They threatened something similar here.

Troy Parrott’s opening goal may be the best ever scored in a green jersey by an Irish player. There is a touch of George Best about him physically and he channelled the essence of the Belfast Boy at his peak by meandering through the Austrian defence and slotting home.

To look around the ground at that point, as Parrott whirled away in disbelief at his own genius and fans whooped and hollered, was to forget everything else and be lost in a joyous and pure moment that football always does so well.

Caoimhin Kelleher delivered another eyes-wide-in-amazement intervention five minutes before the break when he somehow tipped over a Patrick Wimmer snapshot with next to no notice. Then Parrott scored his penalty.

But this evening was never able to unshackle itself fully from more sobering realities. Austria’s late second-half surge to draw the game 2-2 reined in most of the giddiness. The trip to Backa Topola will account for the rest of it.