England's post-Gareth Southgate era begins this weekend with a rare trip to Dublin to face the Republic of Ireland in the Nations League.
Taking charge of the Three Lions will be interim boss Lee Carsley, who as a player won 40 caps for the Republic of Ireland, which is something of a fitting focal point for the complicated history that the two footballing nations have shared.
Saturday’s meeting will see England return to Dublin for just the second time since the 1995 ‘friendly’ at Lansdowne Road that was played during The Troubles and had to be abandoned after just 27 minutes on an evening that saw more than 20 people injured and 40 arrested.
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Ireland had opened the scoring after 22 minutes of the match and when a 26th-minute David Platt goal was disallowed, some England fans began to throw objects and debris down into the lower stands, with Dutch referee Dick Jol immediately stopping the game and taking the players off the pitch.
The crowd trouble had come after a number of unsavoury chants from a section of the travelling supporters and intensified after the players left the pitch. The game was quickly abandoned, with the 4,500 England fans kept inside the stadium until the Garda Public Order Unit attempted to escort them out, which led to more violence.
An official public inquiry later uncovered that a far-right group known as Combat 18 had orchestrated the violence and the two sides would not play again until a 2013 friendly at Wembley, with the teams returning to Dublin in 2015 for a friendly at the Aviva Stadium.
Saturday’s match will be the first time the teams have played each other since a 2020 Wembley friendly, with the return Nations League fixture scheduled for November.
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