FAI Board and Executive should not allow Israel to play on the Aviva Stadium pitch they graced last week
Collins is the first to be grilled over autumn games but he won’t be the last
Ireland captain Nathan Collins was always going to be put up in front of the media this week ahead of the game against Qatar on Thursday night - and two games in the autumn were always going to dominate the questions and the headlines.
The inevitable press conference took place in Abbotstown on Tuesday and the just as inevitable questions around Israel soon followed. Those questions will be as painful by the end of the week as the ankle injury picked up by one FAI staffer in a kickabout at the Aviva Stadium late last week.
The senior executive, injured in the annual match on the staff day out at the National Stadium, will recover and his wounds will heal but the wounds caused by the insistence that the game against Israel goes ahead in Ballsbridge next October show little or no sign of closing, never mind healing.
Whilst you might feel some sympathy for the man who fell to ground clutching his ankle last Friday, it is hard to feel any sympathy for those Board members and any FAI suits who still think hosting Israel in Dublin is a good idea.
The ‘Stop The Game’ movement told them as much via some very high profile signatures earlier this month. The majority of the public have sold the same line to Liveline, Newstalk and any other broadcaster worth their salt in recent weeks.
The FAI heads should again have understood the level of opposition when politicians from various parties boycotted the annual match featuring an Oireachtas team against the FAI stalwarts last week as a protest against said fixtures.
They ought to have realised how much political anger is out there when Dublin Central by-election winner Daniel Ennis breezed into Leinster House for the first time on Tuesday and promptly declared that the Israel fixture should not be played.
This story ain’t going away. The questions posed to Nathan Collins yesterday proved that much again. Those questions will continue for the rest of the week.
Hopefully, at least some questions were asked by the FAI Board to the FAI Board at their regular monthly meeting on Tuesday - their chance to debate amongst themselves the call from General Assembly members for an EGM to discuss the Israel issue and nothing else.
It shouldn’t take an EGM called by members for the FAI to do the right thing now. This is a member’s association after all, not Tesco, so that Board needs to listen to those members and it needs to take appropriate action. And soon.
Yes, we can acknowledge that they have to play the Nations League games against Israel as they have repeatedly said. UEFA won’t treat them kindly if they don’t. But they don’t have to play the home leg in Dublin.
Do what the Scottish women are doing when both their World Cup qualifiers against Israel will be played on neutral territory in Hungary next month, behind closed doors.
That’s an out that saves face for everyone. The FAI big wigs could even look into it when they visit Budapest for Saturday’s Champions League final on the UEFA express.
They can still save face by doing the right thing. Play Israel for sure, just don’t do it here - and spare Nathan Collins and his fellow players the endless questions about a subject they are not equipped to talk about. Nor should they have to.