Doubt cast on England visit

AFTER the draw played out in Kiev last night, Ireland wasted no time in accelerating preparations for next summer’s Euro finals with FAI sources confirming that the Czech Republic will be the visitors to the Aviva Stadium for a friendly game on February 29.

However, plans for a long-awaited friendly against England could yet fall foul of UEFA regulations in the short term.

“There’s a rule that you can’t play any of the other teams a month before the tournament starts,” said FAI chief executive John Delaney last night. “The bigger countries have been making representations to UEFA to have that relaxed if the two sides haven’t been drawn in the original group and we’re awaiting the outcome of that. There’s a UEFA meeting next week and if that went favourably then we’d have England in May but it’s contingent on that.”

While acknowledging that Group C presents a “tough but glamorous” footballing challenge, the FAI boss expressed delight that, for the supporters’ sake, Ireland will be based in Poland for the group stage.

“It’s absolutely great for the supporters because there’s not much travelling involved compared to what there would have been in the Ukraine,” he said. “The first thing will be to ensure that the people who follow us to games, our regular supporters, get tickets.

“We’ve made that commitment so the people who travelled to Andorra, to Slovakia, to Tallinn, they’re our priority, we’ve made that clear.

“We’ll wait to see what allocation the other countries take up but we’ll be taking up the full allocation or more”

Meanwhile, the location of the team’s training base in Poland has still to be finalised.

Ireland ‘s preference is Gdynia, close to Gdansk, but that will depend on Sweden giving up its prior claims to that camp now that they have been drawn in Group D in the Ukraine. Alternatively, Ireland could end up based in Wroclaw.

“Either would suit in terms of location,” said Delaney. “What’s more important is the hotels and of course the training facilities.”

Giovanni Trapattoni and Marco Tardelli will travel to Poland next week to personally assess the options. But they also have to make a final decision about where Ireland’s pre-tournament training camp will take place in May.

With Italy ruled out as an option after the sides were drawn together yesterday, Portugal will be the likeliest destination.