“significant majority”,<\/a> according to FAI chief executive David Courell.<\/p>\nThe players wore black armbands during the game “in recognition of all lives lost in the [Gaza] conflict”.<\/p>\n
The Republic of Ireland then played Austria in Dublin on Thursday, when protests resulted in tennis balls being thrown on to the pitch and a protester briefly interrupting the game when he ran on to the turf, waving a Palestine flag.<\/p>\n
Hallgrimsson said under the circumstances, it will be a “a big win for this group and the association if we go through undamaged”.<\/p>\n
They have four points from three games so far, having beaten Israel and drawn 2-2 with Austria. They lost 1-0 to Kosovo in the campaign opener.<\/p>\n
“The most pleasing thing for me is to see the togetherness and how they stand up for each other,” Hallgrimsson said.<\/p>\n
“Whatever they have done, they have done it with respect to the situation, to each other and after this, this bond of brothers will be stronger than ever. All the obstacles this group will face in the future will be lesser than it is.<\/p>\n
“When we look back, this camp will be a moment we grew the most and stepped up as leaders, supported each other and stuck together. The power of togetherness is stronger than individuals.”<\/p>\n
The Republic of Ireland boss revealed the team have taken part in a group prayer before leaving the dressing room for recent games, which he said was “just to cool our heads before we go on to the pitch”.<\/p>\n
He said that has been led by midfielder Conor Coventry whom he joked is now known within the squad as “Brother Coventry”.<\/p>\n
The Icelander said Dara O’Shea – the team’s captain in place of the injured Nathan Collins – was not with the squad, as his wife was due to give birth. He may arrive back in Backa Topola prior to Sunday’s 19:45 BST kick-off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This has been a challenging international window for the Republic of Ireland, with the Israel fixtures dominating discourse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-790920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}