“I’M SURE I’M quite firmly off their radar now,” says Cyrus Christie when asked if he believes he is still in the mix to return to the Ireland squad.
Christie last played for Ireland in the summer of 2022, and has never had contact with Heimir Hallgrimsson or John O’Shea. The Irish squad have had other priorities, but injuries have forced Christie to have other priorities too.
“I’m happy,” he says, “and I’m enjoying football again.”
Enjoyment now is a League One promotion battle with Bolton Wanderers, with whom he is playing regularly at right-back. Bolton are sixth in the league, but only four points off the top of a congested table.
Cyrus Christie in action for Bolton. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Though Christie last played for Ireland against Ukraine three-and-a-half years ago, he was due to be included in the squad for the Euro 2024 qualifier at home to France the following March, before injury struck.
Christie was then at Hull City in the Championship, and a meniscus problem in his left knee ruled him out of the rest of the season. He returned for the following pre-season and says he knew that something wasn’t quite right with his knee, but that the club didn’t believe him.
“I came back for pre-season and my schedule was maybe over-pushed”, says Christie. “It shouldn’t have been as tough as it was.
“It should have been a build-up, and even when I was playing, I knew something wasn’t right. I could have taken that on myself and pulled myself out, but at the time you don’t want to do that as a player, you want to keep pushing to play.
“They just thought it was me, with a bit of a mental block. It was tough to take. They were doing their ultrasounds, which isn’t going to show much. To be fair, when they were doing their tests and different things, I didn’t have any pain. But I knew something wasn’t right and I battled through the whole season, which was probably silly in hindsight.”
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Christie played regularly for the first of the season but had retreated to a bit-part role from the bench in its closing months, and come season’s end, discovered that, yes, there was a problem with his knee and that he would need surgery to address it. Four days after the operation, Christie read on social media that Hull had released him.
“A nice way for them to go about it,” he says wryly, adding nonetheless that it’s a “great club with great people there”.
Christie faced into a five-month recovery process as a free agent, eventually signing a one-year deal at Swansea City in November, but arriving “miles behind in terms of fitness and matches, and playing catch-up”. He made only 12 appearances across the season, and played 90 minutes just once. Swansea did not offer him a new deal, and so he dropped down a division to Bolton.
“That’s the nature of the game,” he replies when asked if he feels these injuries have hastened the end of his international career. “It might have brought a premature end to that. In the back of my mind, I can always have ambitions to get back in there, but you’ve also got to understand the lay of the land.
“I’ve always loved putting on the Irish jersey, and it would have been nice to get more caps, but at this moment of time, I have to look after my body and health. I am in a good place now, not just physically but mentally as well.”
Christie has 30 Irish caps, and admits to times both good and bad.
The stand-outs include his debut against the United States, learning of the team’s sheer importance to people when he was mobbed by fans when trying to get across to see his family in the players’ lounge after the game. He was the youngest member of the Irish squad at Euro 2016, though behind Seamus Coleman in the pecking order and so denied any gametime. That didn’t stop him making memories, though, and a video from a night out in France popped up in his family group chat a couple of days before we spoke.
“We understood our strengths and our weaknesses,” Christie says of the Irish squad under Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane. “We knew what we were good at, and we played to that.
“Martin and Roy gave me confidence to play to my strengths and do what I do, and that’s what they concentrated on. They were quite laid back, which was really good for us, I think. There weren’t too many restrictions in terms of having so many meetings. We got quite a lot of free time after training just to bond with each other. They created a really good cohesion, and I think that translated onto the pitch.”
There were lows too, and lows which should make the rest of us feel very uncomfortable. Christie scored an own goal in the 5-1 World Cup play-off hammering at home to Denmark, after which he was subjected to appalling racist abuse online. He received death threats, and was sent a petition started online to have him lynched.
Christie says he has continually received racist abuse throughout his career, and it was around this time he said he expected to receive at least five racist slurs online after every game. Not that the abuse was solely restricted to the online sphere: once, during a training session with Ireland, an onlooking schoolboy yelled a racist slur at Christie. “It was a bit of a shock when he said it,” recalls Christie. “He was a young kid, he probably wouldn’t remember it now, do you know what I mean? Whether there was innocence to that, who knows? You never know what’s being said at home.”
After the Denmark play-off, James McClean used an acceptance speech at the annual PFAI awards ceremony to raise the abuse sent to Christie, specifically asking the journalists in the room to report his words. Christie’s gratitude to McClean is leavened with a wider frustration: why does it take a white man to speak up for everybody to take notice?
“It took James McClean to speak up for people to listen,” says Christie. “That always seems to be the way, to be honest, when it comes to things like that. It takes for someone else to speak up, and people don’t want to listen. Fair credit to James, he spoke up and people listened. Ultimately it’s a shame it has to go down like that.”
Christie scores an own-goal in the 5-1 World Cup play-off loss to Denmark. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
The FAI referred the online abuse of Christie to the Gardaí, and shortly after the Denmark play-off, Christie flew to Dublin to meet with representatives of the Gardaí and the FAI, in the putative next step in pursuing those who sent the abuse. Ultimately, Christie says, it went nowhere. He called an early end to the meeting and flew back to England. Christie’s father rang the Gardaí approximately a month later to seek an update on the case, and Christie says his father was told that the Gardaí did not have a department to pursue the case.
When contacted by The 42, the Gardaí confirmed they investigated five racist tweets sent to Christie from September to November 2017, and identified two offenders. The Gardaí say that one of these suspected offenders, a juvenile, was processed in accordance with the Children’s Act 2001. The DPP did not direct a prosecution in respect of the second offender, an adult.
“I don’t believe they were there for me,” Christie says of the Gardaí. “I think it was more there for the protection of themselves. I feel they could have done more to push it and pursue it.
“Listen, it’s a sensitive subject for a lot of people, but within that meeting, they didn’t believe that people could be racist. That was one of the things that came out of it. They couldn’t quite comprehend that someone could be racist, which was quite shocking at the time. I had to proceed to tell them stories of things that happened within my childhood with racism. I understand because they have never been through it, but it was a strange one.
“I don’t know whether they were there maybe just to make out as if they were doing something. It all seemed great when they were speaking, that something was going to get done, but after that meeting, it went silent and I never heard anything after.”
(When asked about Christie’s allegations of what was said to him in their meeting, the Gardaí said, “An Garda Síochána cannot comment on specific remarks attributed to an unnamed member of An Garda Síochána made during a private conversation, the context and connotation of which cannot be corroborated.“)
With his international days likely in the rearview mirror, Christie is focused on staying fit and returning to the Championship with Bolton. He is making plans post-retirement: he won’t be going into coaching but is completing a global sports directorship degree, with a view to progressing into a director of football role.
“I think I have a good vision for it, and good ideas. To be able to guide younger players with the experiences I have had and the career I have had: that’s the direction I am going.”
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‘I’m enjoying football again’ - Ireland’s forgotten defender on injuries, racial abuse, and chasing promotion dream
“I’M SURE I’M quite firmly off their radar now,” says Cyrus Christie when asked if he believes he is still in the mix to return to the Ireland squad.
Christie last played for Ireland in the summer of 2022, and has never had contact with Heimir Hallgrimsson or John O’Shea. The Irish squad have had other priorities, but injuries have forced Christie to have other priorities too.
“I’m happy,” he says, “and I’m enjoying football again.”
Enjoyment now is a League One promotion battle with Bolton Wanderers, with whom he is playing regularly at right-back. Bolton are sixth in the league, but only four points off the top of a congested table.
Though Christie last played for Ireland against Ukraine three-and-a-half years ago, he was due to be included in the squad for the Euro 2024 qualifier at home to France the following March, before injury struck.
Christie was then at Hull City in the Championship, and a meniscus problem in his left knee ruled him out of the rest of the season. He returned for the following pre-season and says he knew that something wasn’t quite right with his knee, but that the club didn’t believe him.
“I came back for pre-season and my schedule was maybe over-pushed”, says Christie. “It shouldn’t have been as tough as it was.
“It should have been a build-up, and even when I was playing, I knew something wasn’t right. I could have taken that on myself and pulled myself out, but at the time you don’t want to do that as a player, you want to keep pushing to play.
“They just thought it was me, with a bit of a mental block. It was tough to take. They were doing their ultrasounds, which isn’t going to show much. To be fair, when they were doing their tests and different things, I didn’t have any pain. But I knew something wasn’t right and I battled through the whole season, which was probably silly in hindsight.”
Christie played regularly for the first of the season but had retreated to a bit-part role from the bench in its closing months, and come season’s end, discovered that, yes, there was a problem with his knee and that he would need surgery to address it. Four days after the operation, Christie read on social media that Hull had released him.
“A nice way for them to go about it,” he says wryly, adding nonetheless that it’s a “great club with great people there”.
Christie faced into a five-month recovery process as a free agent, eventually signing a one-year deal at Swansea City in November, but arriving “miles behind in terms of fitness and matches, and playing catch-up”. He made only 12 appearances across the season, and played 90 minutes just once. Swansea did not offer him a new deal, and so he dropped down a division to Bolton.
“That’s the nature of the game,” he replies when asked if he feels these injuries have hastened the end of his international career. “It might have brought a premature end to that. In the back of my mind, I can always have ambitions to get back in there, but you’ve also got to understand the lay of the land.
“I’ve always loved putting on the Irish jersey, and it would have been nice to get more caps, but at this moment of time, I have to look after my body and health. I am in a good place now, not just physically but mentally as well.”
Christie has 30 Irish caps, and admits to times both good and bad.
The stand-outs include his debut against the United States, learning of the team’s sheer importance to people when he was mobbed by fans when trying to get across to see his family in the players’ lounge after the game. He was the youngest member of the Irish squad at Euro 2016, though behind Seamus Coleman in the pecking order and so denied any gametime. That didn’t stop him making memories, though, and a video from a night out in France popped up in his family group chat a couple of days before we spoke.
“We understood our strengths and our weaknesses,” Christie says of the Irish squad under Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane. “We knew what we were good at, and we played to that.
“Martin and Roy gave me confidence to play to my strengths and do what I do, and that’s what they concentrated on. They were quite laid back, which was really good for us, I think. There weren’t too many restrictions in terms of having so many meetings. We got quite a lot of free time after training just to bond with each other. They created a really good cohesion, and I think that translated onto the pitch.”
There were lows too, and lows which should make the rest of us feel very uncomfortable. Christie scored an own goal in the 5-1 World Cup play-off hammering at home to Denmark, after which he was subjected to appalling racist abuse online. He received death threats, and was sent a petition started online to have him lynched.
Christie says he has continually received racist abuse throughout his career, and it was around this time he said he expected to receive at least five racist slurs online after every game. Not that the abuse was solely restricted to the online sphere: once, during a training session with Ireland, an onlooking schoolboy yelled a racist slur at Christie. “It was a bit of a shock when he said it,” recalls Christie. “He was a young kid, he probably wouldn’t remember it now, do you know what I mean? Whether there was innocence to that, who knows? You never know what’s being said at home.”
After the Denmark play-off, James McClean used an acceptance speech at the annual PFAI awards ceremony to raise the abuse sent to Christie, specifically asking the journalists in the room to report his words. Christie’s gratitude to McClean is leavened with a wider frustration: why does it take a white man to speak up for everybody to take notice?
“It took James McClean to speak up for people to listen,” says Christie. “That always seems to be the way, to be honest, when it comes to things like that. It takes for someone else to speak up, and people don’t want to listen. Fair credit to James, he spoke up and people listened. Ultimately it’s a shame it has to go down like that.”
The FAI referred the online abuse of Christie to the Gardaí, and shortly after the Denmark play-off, Christie flew to Dublin to meet with representatives of the Gardaí and the FAI, in the putative next step in pursuing those who sent the abuse. Ultimately, Christie says, it went nowhere. He called an early end to the meeting and flew back to England. Christie’s father rang the Gardaí approximately a month later to seek an update on the case, and Christie says his father was told that the Gardaí did not have a department to pursue the case.
When contacted by The 42, the Gardaí confirmed they investigated five racist tweets sent to Christie from September to November 2017, and identified two offenders. The Gardaí say that one of these suspected offenders, a juvenile, was processed in accordance with the Children’s Act 2001. The DPP did not direct a prosecution in respect of the second offender, an adult.
“I don’t believe they were there for me,” Christie says of the Gardaí. “I think it was more there for the protection of themselves. I feel they could have done more to push it and pursue it.
“Listen, it’s a sensitive subject for a lot of people, but within that meeting, they didn’t believe that people could be racist. That was one of the things that came out of it. They couldn’t quite comprehend that someone could be racist, which was quite shocking at the time. I had to proceed to tell them stories of things that happened within my childhood with racism. I understand because they have never been through it, but it was a strange one.
“I don’t know whether they were there maybe just to make out as if they were doing something. It all seemed great when they were speaking, that something was going to get done, but after that meeting, it went silent and I never heard anything after.”
(When asked about Christie’s allegations of what was said to him in their meeting, the Gardaí said, “An Garda Síochána cannot comment on specific remarks attributed to an unnamed member of An Garda Síochána made during a private conversation, the context and connotation of which cannot be corroborated.“)
With his international days likely in the rearview mirror, Christie is focused on staying fit and returning to the Championship with Bolton. He is making plans post-retirement: he won’t be going into coaching but is completing a global sports directorship degree, with a view to progressing into a director of football role.
“I think I have a good vision for it, and good ideas. To be able to guide younger players with the experiences I have had and the career I have had: that’s the direction I am going.”
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Cyrus Christie Republic Of Ireland