Surreal as it was, there was a certain comfort in listening to the commentator on the world feed. It was almost like this was just a regular football game between two sides scrapping for points after dismal starts to their Nations League campaigns. You know, the usual stuff.
And if you’d encased yourself in a cocoon the last while, and just tuned in to this fella, you’d have thought all was relatively fine with the world. Here we were, passing the time on a Sunday evening, watching a run-of-the-mill meeting with – checks notes – Israel in Debrecen.
“Goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu has chosen to make himself unavailable, so Jimmy Dunne has taken his place,” he told us. No explanation for why Bazunu was unavailable, nor that Dunne is actually a QPR defender, so him taking a goalkeeping spot on the bench was, well, weird.
In that sense, our world feed man had the touch of the Comical Alis about him, chaos, turmoil, hostility and rage all looking over his shoulder, but him only seeing a game in a close-to-empty stadium in Hungary, which was home to neither side, and treating it like it was just another footballing day.
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“Heimir Hallgrímsson will be delighted,” he declared when Ireland went 3-0 up, the camera then picking out a grim-faced Hallgrímsson who had the look of a man who wanted to be, quite literally, anywhere else in the world. It’s unlikely that the FAI ever warned the Icelander that one day he’d be harangued about Ireland playing Germany in the 1930s.
RTÉ, of course, had opted for stripped back coverage of the game. They were contractually obliged to show this and next Sunday’s game between the nations in Serbia. So it fell to world feed man to take us through it all.
Teams out. Ireland wearing black armbands. No explanation. The Irish players bowing their heads during the Israeli anthem. No explanation. No handshakes, no exchanging of pennants. No explanation. Dunne all set to take his place between the sticks should Caoimhín Kelleher and Max O’Leary, somehow, become indisposed. No explanation. And on it went.
We have, of course, had to catch ourselves on these past few days. Yes, it’s been a seismically awful experience for Irish football and all those who follow it. But you know yourself, first world problems. And as Gavin Bazunu would tell, some things are actually bigger than football.
The result in Debrecen? Who cares?
