Ciarán Murphy: Trump in Doonbeg was a walk in the park compared to weeks ahead for the Republic of Ireland

Will there ever be a weirder three weeks in Irish sport than the 21 days between Shane Lowry winning the Irish Open in front of Donald Trump last Sunday and the Republic of Ireland team playing Israel in the Nations League for the second time in a week on October 4th?I began working full-time in Newstalk in July 2004, just before the start of the Athens Olympics. It was a miserable two weeks for Ireland, enlivened only by Cian O’Connor winning a gold medal, only to have it stripped from him after his horse tested positive for human antidepressants. Those were the weighty moral issues we had to wrestle with in the mid-2000s.In spring 2013, as we prepared to leave Newstalk, Lance Armstrong was sitting down with Oprah Winfrey for a blockbuster interview about doping. His cheating had just about sunk an entire sport and brought shame upon himself personally, but it was at least a profoundly human impulse.The moral quandaries presented by even the most basic interest in major sport now boggles the mind. I felt sorry for Lowry on Sunday, given the luminosity of the golf that secured his victory at Trump International Golf Links in Doonbeg, but that’s where he won, and his success is indivisible from the location and with whom he had to share the stage on Sunday evening.READ MOREI no more boycotted the last round of the Irish Open than Shane’s dad Brendan did. He was absent on account of his role as selector with the Clara senior team, who had a game in the Offaly senior football championship. I was at Tuam Stadium watching Milltown in the Galway championship. We both lost. But the idea of sitting on my couch watching Trump watching golf did not fill me with delight. In fact, it made my decision to go to Tuam very easy.The craven applause greenside and the rapturous reception Trump received in the members’ bar at the course on Saturday night was a far cry from the protests in Dublin. Given the choice between what we saw in Doonbeg and Dublin last Saturday, I know which group of Irish people I’d rather spend time with. Would it really have been that difficult for the people on the 18th last Sunday to not applaud? Was that really too high a bar?And yet, I still feel like last Sunday will go down as a walk in the park compared to the next three weeks for the Republic of Ireland team. John Martin, the FAI’s director of football, said this week that he’d rather the games against Israel didn’t go ahead, but the fixtures had to be fulfilled for the benefit of Irish football.It was reported by the 42 this week that RTÉ will limit their coverage of the two Israel games. They will have no commentators or analysis teams at the games, and match footage will be taken from the Uefa world feed. Nothing about this will be ordinary.FAI director of football John Martin. Photograph: James Lawlor/Inpho The mere suggestion that Ireland would consider not playing Israel drew a sharp rebuke on Twitter from the late Lindsey Graham, former US Senator for South Carolina, who threatened Ireland with economic sanctions.Ireland would have a lot to lose from such a decision, and it might well go beyond the world of football, but last week the UK banned trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law. They were subsequently joined by France, Canada and nine other countries. Israel reacted with a predictable fury, but the reaction of the US has thus far been fairly mute. Perhaps Ireland has more economic cover than we have been led to believe.[ Ireland are set to play Israel – which means we have already lostOpens in new window ]A boycott has consequences, it always does. But looked at through a purely footballing lens, we won’t get relegated from Nations League B if we finish bottom of the table having forfeit the six points on offer against Israel, we’d be in a promotion/relegation playoff against a team from Nations League C.Compared to welcoming Donald Trump – the man who supplies arms to the IDF, or playing Israel – a country which stands accused of genocide by the UN, the International Court of Justice, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Médecins Sans Frontières, the GAA’s ongoing sponsorship deal with Allianz seems almost quaint in comparison. But speaking as a GAA person, I believe the Allianz sponsorship is something we can affect. And we should be willing to face the consequences, whatever they may be, of standing up for what we believe is right.The Ed Sheeran-Macklemore debacle this week has been a lesson in that regard. As Sheeran has learned, staying avowedly ‘neutral’ is as much a political decision as speaking out. Irish artists Aaron Rowe and Beoga, who had been on tour with Sheeran, decided they would pass up the biggest opportunity of their careers because they refused to bow to the censorship of billionaires, choosing instead to have the courage of their convictions. They had far more to lose than the FAI or the Irish golf industry. Rowe and Beoga can’t know when, or if, the chance to play to hundreds of thousands of people will ever come again. But for their principles, it was a price worth paying.