{"id":637353,"date":"2026-09-27T06:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T06:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/637353\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T06:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T06:42:08","slug":"it-would-be-wrong-to-participate-gavin-bazunu-on-decision-to-withdraw-from-squad-for-israel-match-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/637353\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It would be wrong to participate\u2019: Gavin Bazunu on decision to withdraw from squad for Israel match \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Irish goalkeeper <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/gavin-bazunu\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/gavin-bazunu\/\">Gavin Bazunu<\/a> has released a statement on social media after his decision to withdraw from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/republic-of-ireland-mnt\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/republic-of-ireland-mnt\/\">Republic of Ireland<\/a> squad before their matches against Israel in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/nations-league\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/nations-league\/\">Nations League<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Bazunu informed the squad on Friday that he did not wish to participate in the Israel games, tomorrow and on October 4th behind closed doors in Ba\u010dka Topola, Serbia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cRepresenting my country means everything to me. I have the utmost respect for every single one of my team-mates, the manager, his staff and the Irish people,\u201d Bazunu said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cHowever I have reached a decision that I have not taken lightly. I am a man of strong faith and try my best to be a person of character and principle therefore I feel it would be wrong to participate in the upcoming fixtures against Israel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cMy decision is based purely upon my personal belief that the killing of innocent people is wrong.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cIt is important to note that my stance is not in opposition of the Israeli people or the Jewish community but against the atrocities in the region.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThere are few times where you get a chance in life to stand up for something bigger and I strongly believe this is one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ireland\u2019s press conference and training were postponed this morning by several hours as the team discussed whether to proceed with the match against Israel. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The FAI chief executive David Courell said Ireland would proceed a \u201csignificant majority\u201d vote in favour of playing by the Irish players on Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Former Irish manager Brian Kerr said on Virgin Media that the vote was 14-8, without Bazunu\u2019s vote, quoting his \u201csources and people close to the dressingroom\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irish goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu has released a statement on social media after his decision to withdraw from the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[36768,61,60,1842,112],"class_list":["post-637353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gavin-bazunu","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}