Saints’ long and winding road east
Having been drawn to go from literally one end of the continent to the other in heading from Iceland to Kazakhstan, the logistics of the trip to the former Soviet country have proved arduous. And, worse, the club is likely to lose money from it.
The trek began at 3.50pm on Tuesday with a flight from Dublin to Heathrow. On landing in the London Airport, St Pat’s secretary Anthony Delaney had to dash to the Kazakh embassy to retrieve the squad’s visas.
In the end, despite the doubts of some players, he made it back in plenty of time for the 9.30pm flight to Almaty.
The panel arrived in the Kazakh city at 9.08am local time yesterday – 4.08am Irish time.
From there, they had to wait for another four hours before boarding a flight to Astana.
Unsurprisingly, the squad’s preparation for the game last night didn’t extend beyond swimming. But then they couldn’t have even tried out the Karagandy pitch if they wanted. On the advice of the Kazakh club’s last Europa League opponents – Slovenian side FC Koper, who suffered food poisoning there – Pat’s are staying 250km away from Karagandy, in Astana itself.
As such they’ll have to take a long coach trip before the game today.
In all, the 10,000km round trip is likely to cost the club just under €100,000 – which is also just above the €90,000 Uefa prize money for reaching the round. As one club figure said yesterday, though, “aside from having to fulfil our fixtures, it’s worth it for the prestige and the chance of a big game if we qualify”.
St Pat’s will have to do so, however, without the injured duo Daniel North and Dave Mulcahy, who didn’t travel.
Despite the wearying nature of the travel, Pat’s should be favourites for the tie.
This marks the first time that Karagandy have reached this stage of European competition.
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