England return to Lansdowne Road for first competitive game in Ireland for 34 years – The Irish Times

On 29 June 2021, I queued with thousands of others outside Lansdowne Road. Three years earlier, I had bought tickets for a Euro 2020 round of 16 match scheduled to be played at the Aviva Stadium on that date, which turned out to be between England and Germany. There was one small problem, though. On this sunny afternoon, I was not queuing for a match that had been moved to Wembley after Ireland’s late withdrawal as co-hosts of the tournament. Instead, I was patiently waiting to receive my first Covid-19 vaccine in a stadium that had been quickly transformed into a giant medical centre.

Three years later than expected, England return to Lansdowne Road on Saturday for their first competitive match in Ireland for 34 years. You might hope that watching the Three Lions take on our Boys in Green would be less painful than having your arm bitten by a stranger, but experience shows otherwise.

My first time at this game was in February 1995, a friendly that shattered the idea that ‘football is a game of two halves’. The game was abandoned after 27 minutes when hooligans unilaterally decided to start demolishing the old Lansdowne Road 12 years ahead of schedule, throwing pieces of the Upper West Stand onto the pitch and the fans below.

England’s next match at Lansdowne Road in June 2015 was slightly better, with at least a second half, but many spectators still left the venue early, this time voluntarily. For security reasons, kick-off was at 1pm on a Sunday and the 0-0 draw that followed was so unremarkable that even the buzz-mongers at ITV felt the need to tweet “FT: Ireland 0 England 0. We’re sorry.”

This time, the pre-match coverage has been dominated by the inclusion in the England squad of Declan Rice and Jack Grealish, who have previously played for Ireland. But I’m not sure we’re in the best position to get upset about dual internationals who have at least played for two different countries. For decades, there were two ‘Ireland’ teams, one selected by the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) in Dublin and the other by the Football Federation of Ireland (IFA) based in Belfast.

Many players have played for both teams, including Johnny Carey who, in 1946, played for both Ireland teams against England within 48 hours. On 28 September, Carey played for the Ireland IFA team in a 7–2 defeat by England in a home international at Windsor Park. Two days later, he captained the Ireland IFA team to a 1–0 defeat by England in a friendly at Dalymount Park.

Carey got his revenge in 1949 when he captained a 2-0 victory at Goodison Park, ensuring the Republic of Ireland became the first foreign side to beat England at home.

John Giles went even further by representing Ireland and England simultaneously rather than successively. In 1973, Giles was selected by Alf Ramsey to play an international at Wembley Stadium alongside Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore and Alan Ball.

The match celebrated the enlargement of the European Economic Community (EEC) two days earlier and involved the trio of new entrants (Ireland, the United Kingdom and Denmark) playing the sextet of original members in a match marketed as The Three v The Six. Despite being outnumbered, Giles helped The Three to an impressive 2-0 victory. If the UK’s accession to the EEC deserved a celebratory match, then its departure deserved a sequel, but sadly there are no plans to commemorate Brexit by playing The One v The Twenty-Seven.

Had such a match been organised, Conor Gallagher might have struggled to know who to represent, as after his recent £35million move from Chelsea to Atletico Madrid he took an Irish passport to circumvent a La Liga rule allowing only three non-EU players in a matchday squad.

Gallagher attended the All-Ireland hurling final between Clare and Cork in July, but being a mere spectator at Croke Park is unlikely to impress some of his team-mates. Harry Kane’s great-great-grandfather Jim Flood was part of the Limerick hurling team that won their first All-Ireland in 1897, and Jack Grealish played at Croke Park in 2009, scoring a point for Warwickshire by firing the ball over the bar – a shooting strategy that Irish fans will hope he will continue to adopt on Saturday.

The last of his three friendly appearances for Ireland came in a 2-1 win over the United States at Lansdowne Road in 2018. However, his international captain has played a competitive game in Dublin. The first of Harry Kane’s 280 goals for Spurs came at Tallaght Stadium in a 4-0 Europa League win over Shamrock Rovers in December 2011.

England’s first manager is Lee Carsley, who was given the pick of the team for this game, which was unusual. Having won 40 caps for Ireland as a player, Carsley was head coach of the England Under-21 team that won the 2023 European Championship without conceding a goal. This led to discussions with the FAI about becoming Ireland manager, but unsurprisingly Carsley preferred an internal promotion, taking charge of an England team strong enough to finish runners-up at the Euros twice in a row.

The new home team starter will be Heimir Hallgrímsson, whose greatest achievement as Iceland’s co-manager was a 2-1 win over England at Euro 2016 that saw a country of just 330,000 people reach the quarter-finals. Hallgrímsson’s success has sparked such euphoria that in 2016 Icelanders spent 0.1% of their country’s gross domestic product on tickets to the European Championship.