Ireland will play Israel. The players will turn up. The far-left noise will not. On 27 September in Debrecen and 4 October in Bačka Topola, the Republic of Ireland will fulfil two UEFA Nations League fixtures against Israel. The FAI is proceeding because walking away would mean forfeited points, ranking damage, a possible relegation hit and an estimated eight-figure hole in Irish football. That is the adult decision. Ruth Coppinger and Richard Boyd Barrett have spent months trying to turn it into a morality play. They have failed. People Before Profit do not run the FAI, pick the team or pay the bills if Ireland is thrown out of a competition. They do own a microphone though Boyd Barrett promised “enormous protests” if Israel ever set foot in Dublin and demanded Israel be “cast out of the community of nations.” Coppinger this week appealed over the heads of the association to the players themselves, telling them to copy musicians who pulled out of an Ed Sheeran tour and refuse to play. That is not solidarity with Irish football. It is an instruction to professional footballers who love their country to sabotage their own campaign so the mad left can claim a scalp. The players have not taken the bait. Heimir Hallgrímsson spoke to them individually. Some feel uncomfortable. None wanted to be “the one” who broke ranks. They will play as a team. That is what international footballers do when their association has already taken the legal and financial decision. Nathan Collins had already said the squad would not stand against an individual conscience call. No one has made one. Seamus Coleman is not even in this squad. The people who actually wear the shirt have chosen the green jersey over a Dáil press conference. The same voices treat this fixture as uniquely radioactive while Ireland has played, and will play, plenty of other countries with ugly records. Russia was banned after a full-scale invasion of a sovereign neighbour. That is a clear, state-on-state war with a sporting governing-body precedent. Coppinger and Boyd Barrett want the same treatment applied here because it fits a long-running domestic campaign, not because UEFA or FIFA have applied a consistent rule. When the FAI asked to be kept apart from Israel in future draws, UEFA said no, there is no history of direct conflict between the two associations. That answer is inconvenient, so it is ignored. Campaign polls commissioned by boycott groups show majority support for cancellation. Fine. Organised activists and a slice of the public want a political gesture. FAI member clubs, at an EGM, voted to play rather than accept “significant and lasting harm” to the whole game. Grassroots football, league clubs and the national team’s competitive future are not talking points for People Before Profit. They are the reason the fixtures exist. Moving the “home” game behind closed doors to Serbia was an operational concession to protest risk, not a surrender to it. Irish fans who still want to watch their team can follow the Hungary game. That is more respect for supporters than tennis balls on the pitch during a Qatar friendly. Social media has been blunt. “Keep politics out of sport” is not a sophisticated foreign-policy thesis. It is ordinary people telling two far-left TDs to stop using the national team as a protest prop. Coppinger and Boyd Barrett do not have to qualify for a tournament, sit through a closed-doors match in Serbia, or explain to young players why six points and years of ranking work were thrown away for a gesture that would not move a single diplomat in Brussels or Jerusalem. The players do. Ireland should play. The squad should be backed for doing the job they were selected to do. If the left wants sanctions, they have a parliament. They do not get to conscript the Boys in Green.