friendly win over Qatar was disrupted<\/b><\/a>. <\/b><\/p>\nThe Aviva Stadium game – which the Republic of Ireland won 1-0 thanks to Nathan Collins’ early header – was twice briefly interrupted in the first half when home fans threw tennis balls featuring the Palestine flag on to the pitch.<\/p>\n
After the game, RTE reported that protesters were ejected from the ground, and McGrath expects more backlash before the Republic of Ireland face Israel in a neutral venue on 27 September and 4 October in Dublin in the Nations League. <\/p>\n
Earlier this week, Republic of Ireland stalwart Seamus Coleman said the situation “should have been dealt with above us”.<\/p>\n
“I obviously listened to Seamus’ interview and I think he was spot on,” McGrath told BBC Sport NI. <\/p>\n
“It’s obviously a unique scenario. The people (protesters), we have to listen to them, they have the right to do what they do, as long as it’s done in a peaceful way, that’s all that matters.<\/p>\n
“I’m sure it’s going to heat up over the next few months. Like I said, we don’t want to be put into a position. Hopefully the powers above us can work something out or use it for the greater good, I’m not sure what the process will be as it heats up.<\/p>\n
“At the end of the day, we’re footballers and we don’t want to be caught in this, but sometimes we might have to.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Republic of Ireland midfielder Jamie McGrath says he expects the controversy surrounding the side’s upcoming Israel fixtures to “heat up”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}