OTB's Ben Symes previews Ireland vs Austria in the Nations League.

Ben Symes (0:00)

The Big Red Bench. Saturday and Sunday from 6pm, Cork's Red FM.

Harry Hayden (0:08)

Right, we're delighted to be joined by Off The Ball's Ben Symes as we look ahead to the final, or the penultimate Nations League game for the Republic of Ireland as they face Austria later today. Ben, you're over there in Linz. How are things over there in Austria?

Ben Symes (0:23)

Cold. How are you? Very cold. This is certainly not an environment that I would want to be playing football in. I was watching the Ireland O'21s team last night in Finland in the snow, in Tampere in Finland and well, well, it might be sunny skies here in Linz, I can promise you the temperatures are pretty much the exact same. It's the third biggest city in Austria. There's not a lot going on.

Definitely one of the more quiet trips I think that Ireland fans would be on in terms of the city they're going to, but as you can imagine, when Ireland fans are everywhere to go there, they're making themselves heard around the place.

Harry Hayden (0:58)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, like I was a bit confused. I just assumed it was in Vienna. I actually only, it was when I actually looked at it, I saw it was in Linz.

It's an interesting sort of city to choose in, isn't it?

Ben Symes (1:11)

Yeah, they've kind of recently been moving their games around Austria a little bit, and Linz is a place they found to like quite a lot. They've actually never lost a game here. The Raffaisson Arena is where the game is going to be tonight. It's a stadium that was, originally, it was demolished where Linz played in 2021 It was originally built, I think, in 1952 And then they rebuilt the stadium in 2023 with the help of the local government. Brand new, it was in it yesterday, brand new, state of the art kind of stadium.

It's a category four UEFA stadium, so it has everything required for a game of this magnitude. But as I said, Austria have never lost here. They've drawn one game and they've won all the others. In fact, they haven't lost in Austria at all in over three years. It was a 3-2 loss to Germany, was the last time they lost in Austria at all.

You're probably thinking, God, they're moving out to Vienna to a smaller city. They certainly do like playing here. I think maybe some people have a little bit of a twisted view of how Austria will play after that game in Dublin, where Ireland performed so well for the opening 60-65 minutes. I think that last 2025, I think we could see a bit more of that from Austria today.

Harry Hayden (2:21)

Yeah, I suppose, look, before we look directly into the game, like, you know, the last international break, it was like you couldn't have scripted something like that if you tried in terms of the amount of drama that was involved. And obviously, it was a new international break as well, which I think people forget about, like, in that there was four games. We never saw that before. But like the fact, you know, we started in Pristina, then we went to depression, then we had a pit stop in Dublin, then we had to go to northern Serbia. And obviously, you had everything that was happening between the two Israel games and the press conferences. It was just chaos. It feels nice to just have a regular international break with one away game and one home game, doesn't it?

Ben Symes (2:57)

Yeah, I mean, from a selfish point of view as well, it certainly feels nice to not be traveling all around Europe following a geopolitical story rather than a sports story.

But yeah, I think everyone in that camp is just quite happy to see most of the back of it. I see there's still investigations on going regarding the incident at halftime in the game in Serbia and the racism allegations that were by the fans in the stadium in the Brest and towards Ademita. Look, I was in that stadium. I thought I heard quite clearly what was being said. Those investigations are still on going with both sides. So the story isn't completely over. But those players in the dressing room will be really, really happy to get back to just playing football and not have to deal with any of that outside noise. But I think most of the journey as well will be reasonably happy to get back to focusing on football.

Harry Hayden (3:47)

Yeah, you were having a bit of a, almost like an interrelling tour the last, the last international break with all the cities you were going to. I suppose Ben, like Joe, you're someone who's obviously spent a bit of time with Hamer in the last few, or certainly in the last international break. And like I remember you were speaking to him after that last game. And Joe, even looking from the TV at home and you're looking at Hamer, he just looked shattered in that kind of last game. And that camp really took out of him. You obviously speak to him earlier on the week. Like what was your kind of impression speaking to him?