‘We can’t tolerate this type of behaviour’ – Ireland U-21 manager on ‘racist incident’ that saw match abandoned

Ireland’s U-21 side were playing in the second game of a friendly tournament against Kuwait, in Austria when it became known that one of the Irish subs, Dubliner Sinclair Armstrong, was racially abused by an opponent.

Crawford’s staff, his players and the FAI officials present agreed as a group to refuse to play on in the game in the face of a lack of action from the match referee and the FAI then confirmed on social media that the match was abandoned, with the matter reported to UEFA and FIFA.

The Kuwait FA said they “categorically reject” the accusations and claimed the match was called off to protect their players from potential injuries given the "excessive roughness and tension” in the match.

Armstrong’s club, QPR, have since issued a statement backing that FAI call to abandon the game and pledged the club’s support to the player. But Crawford, speaking today to FAI’s in-house media, said calling the game off was their only way to make a statement.

“We knew it was going to be a challenging match, we were expecting a competitive game. After the hour mark we believe there was a racist incident which we are certainly not going to stand for,” Crawford said.

“One of our players was racially abused and it certainly upset and annoyed a lot of our players and when I found the details, we, as a whole group, decided there was no way we were going to play the game. I do have to commend the level of maturity that our players showed, everybody was calm about it, we stepped aside and waited out on the pitch until Kuwait had left the dressing room area.

“It's a really disappointing end to our international window but we cannot tolerate this type of behaviour in society or in sport and for me, what we did was the right thing to do.

“I fully support the FAI’s stance to take this matter to FIFA and UEFA and hope now that the correct and appropriate action is taken. I’m proud of the stance our players and staff took to stand by one of our own. No-one should be subjected to racism, football’s beauty is its inclusivity and we won't let racism ruin our game.”

Earlier this season Crawford was very vocal in the wake of racial abuse on social media of members of the Ireland U-15 side, with senior international Adam Idah also speaking out on that issue.

FAI CEO Jonathan Hill said: “Our position here is very simple and unequivocal. We take a zero tolerance approach to any form of racism and we fully support the actions of Jim and his team. No player at any level of football should be exposed to this type of situation.”