Patrick O'Donovan

They shouldn't, as Padder said, have this pressure put upon them.

I do think at this stage that Minister Patrick O'Donovan should haul in the FAI in relation to

this.

In a way, when you look at it and when you stand back, When you look at that statement from the FAI CEO that he wasn't qualified to adjudicate if this was a genocide or not, if these are the people who are informing the players as to what is happening, well, then maybe it's understandable why the players felt so ill-equipped to decide.

Because they don't have that kind of relationship.

You know, like going back to like Patrick O'Donovan, you know, threatening funding for an incident at a football pitch.

You know, they're

definitely

Charlie McConnell was being blamed, you know, eye off the ball.

And Patrick Donovan had the information sent out to all the Fine Gael reps.

And look, it's an important one.

They view the fact that...

They're saying that they welcome the game going ahead.

Minister Patrick O'Donovan has been deeply unhelpful.

He certainly hasn't given the impression that he would have backed the FAI.

If you look in In previous and back in the 90s, Bertie Ahern's comments around Yugoslavia was much more brave.

I mean, you can very easily turn around and go, well, it was the Minister of Sport.

Patrick O'Donovan who said that these games would go ahead and then turned around and said he's not going to be at those games so it's very easy for the government now to turn around and say that they would have backed the FAI when it was quite clear from the start that there was two people who were always insistent this game was going to go ahead one was Patrick O'Donovan the other was Paul Cook within the FAI The very first thing that I think that I am drawn to today is obviously Gavin Bizzuno, but it is the...

I mean, one, the courage from him to step up and say it, but the real questions are asked now of...

You know, the FAI and Hamer Halgrimson came out last week and told us that they spoke to every single member individually in the squad.

They don't want to have to be dealing with this.

I do think that they feel that it should, you know, and Patrick O'Donovan has made comments over the last 24 hours that conflicted what he said earlier on.

They have just been... left to hang on that's why we should talk about Patrick

O'Donovan sorry I will say because Patrick O'Donovan who said in February of course that the Israeli football team is not the Israeli government the words to that effect I don't want to be misquoting or something like that and then the other thing that's happened tonight and again it's a complicated one but Israel have had a player sent off And for a celebration that is an Arab-Israeli player, you know, there is I think you can look at his celebration and say, what was this? Did he intend to be mimicking some kind of gun salute? Could it have been a pooled queue? I mean, what you would say is that this guy definitely isn't one of the Nobel candidates that they referenced in the in the quote earlier in the week that in this sensitive time.

When there's all this scrutiny on the team, it's not the best advice, celebration, whatever way you explain it.

But that even in itself just gives you a little picture.