STOP IRA SONGS
FA must crack down on chants before Dublin friendly
AS England’s supporters settled in for a few pints at the Huntsman pub in the centre of Turin on Tuesday afternoon, a sizeable number spilled on to the street outside to sing the latest anti-IRA song.
‘**** the IRA,’ it goes — and it really does go on, and on and on.
Inside the Juventus Stadium, with 2,000 travelling England fans seated in the curva at the north west area, there was more of the same.
Frankly, it is embarrassing to listen to — a stain on our usually good-natured and good-humoured travelling supporters as we look ahead to June’s friendly with the Republic of Ireland in Dublin. It also places a strain on the FA.
What can they do when thousands of travelling fans are singing: ‘Where were you in World War Two,’ or the German bomber song that has been heard for many years on our overseas trips? Toecurling stuff.
As for the IRA songs, many of the younger fans who join in with these chants cannot know or understand the significance of the Irish political situation and how it affected Britain through the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties.
In Dublin there will be the issue of provocation, the potential to engage with a city that has traditionally been a political hotspot. There is barely time to catch our breath before England’s 3,000 supporters head to the Aviva Stadium for the first fixture against the Republic of Ireland since 1995.
It was at Lansdowne Road on February 15 that year when rioting England fans — many of them associated with the neo- Nazi group Combat 18 — caused the fixture with Jack Charlton’s side to be abandoned.
In the intervening years there have been various conversations between the FA and the FA of Ireland about a fixture between the teams, but it is only now they can agree that the time is right. Let’s not spoil it.
The fixture with Martin O’Neill’s labouring team on June 7 is a bookend to the season ahead of the final chapter in Slovenia seven days later. Roy Hodgson is a football man and you can tell by his pained expression at the end of every post-match briefing that he would rather not be answering questions about fans’ behaviour.
‘We can only hope that in some way we put that right before we go to Ireland because the last thing we want is anything (other) than a very good football match,’ he said after the 1-1 draw with Italy.
This is an awkward situation for the FA and yesterday they were reluctant to release another state- ment condemning the anti-IRA chanting as there is no evidence that it has had a positive effect.
The first audible chants of this latest song can be traced back to Celtic Park in November, when England emerged with an uplifting 3-1 victory over Scotland. Life felt good.
That was until Hodgson, underprepared for a question about the nature of the chants, answered one with some assistance from a diplomatic member of the FA’s communications team.
The FA attempted to defuse the situation by releasing a statement the following day apologising for the behaviour of ‘a section of the England support’.
It read: ‘We have consistently urged supporters to show respect and not to chant songs that could be regarded as insulting to others — particularly from a religious or political perspective.’
The FA are in a tricky position because they are getting hammered by the travelling fans at every away game for the ‘two caps for Wembley’ loyalty scheme.
Previously, those who travelled to watch England were rewarded with double the ‘ caps’, giving greater access to restricted-allocation European Championship and World Cup tickets.
Now, fans who attend home games get twice the points instead.
The FA would do well to take a closer look at this policy in an effort to placate the supporters.
Is it a fair trade? Probably not, but then it isn’t equitable to inflict anti-IRA songs on the people of Ireland the day before kick-off at the Aviva Stadium, either.