November 26 – Football Association of Ireland chief executive John Delaney (pictured) has apologised after a video of him singing an Irish Republican song in a Dublin bar was broadcast on Youtube. Delaney was part of a group singing a song about Northern Irish man Joe McDonnell who was one of the IRA hunger strikers who died in 1981.
The song was sung after the Republic of Ireland’s 4-1 win over the USA. The video was taken on a camera phone without Delaney’s knowledge.
“If the song offends anyone of course I’m sorry,” Delaney told Irish broadcaster RTE.
“When you sing a song like that, you don’t believe in every word that is in the song.”
“I’m not someone who supports violence at all. In fact over a large number of years I have been working closely with cross-border initiatives in football to break down barriers.
“I’m not a violent person. My grandfather fought in the Civil War and he also fought in the War of Independence. I have always said I have a nationalist background.”
The same night that Delaney was caught crooning an IRA sympathisers’ song, a group of English fans were criticised for anti-IRA chants directed at Scottish fans at a friendly match in Glasgow.
The Republic of Ireland will host England in a friendly at the Aviva stadium in Dublin in June 2015. The last time England played Ireland in Ireland, in 1995, the match was abandoned as English fans tore out seats in the old Lansdowne Road stadium and hurled them on to the pitch.
England played a friendly against Ireland at Wembley last year in front of an 80,000 crowd. The match passed off without major crowd trouble.
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