Ireland squad given go-ahead for crunch Slovakia trip after backroom team member's Covid case

Republic of Ireland manager Stephen Kenny and assistant manager Damien Duff speak to players during a Republic of Ireland training session at Abbotstown on Tuesday. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

Public health officials have given Stephen Kenny’s Republic of Ireland squad and support staff the green light to fly to Bratislava for their Euro 2020 play-off semi-final against Slovakia after a member of the backroom team had tested positive for Covid-19.

Protocols were executed when the results were learned and contact tracing resulted in two more staff members restricting their movements. All three are asymptomatic. The two close contacts have returned negative tests, as have all players, management and other staff members in the team ‘bubble’.

Permission to depart for Slovakia was duly stamped and the team will have followed a familiar routine on arrival to the one utilised last month when they played Bulgaria in Sofia in the Nations League where they were whisked through arrivals and transported to their hotel on board a sanitised bus with a driver who has been Covid tested.

The travelling party is limited to 45 members, including players. Any FAI officials who might travel other than that are kept apart from the group at all times, whether at the stadium or in the team hotel where yellow stickers and arrows proliferate.

Uefa’s guidelines even go as far as to state that meals should be served in their own team rooms by members of their own party rather than waiters. The strictures are similarly tight in the stadium where there will be, of course, no fans present on Thursday night.

The aim “is to minimise the amount of contact between the different groups involved in the match to reduce the possibility of any cross-contagion between groups, and therefore to limit the number of people that need to be tested and the frequency of this testing,” says Uefa.

The effects of the pandemic on the game in Ireland were evident in the domestic game as well on Tuesday with Galway United’s SSE Airtricity League First Division game against Drogheda United, due to take place this Friday, called off after two positive cases in the former team’s squad.

It is the first time that a match in either the Premier or the First Division has been put on hold because of a positive case since the restart but the virus’s unwanted influence has been apparent in other team sports too.

Munster Rugby announced a single positive case in their senior squad on Tuesday morning and the cancellation of training at their high performance centre in Limerick. The GAA had already announced the cessation of all club games on Monday after a number of instances where fans had failed to adhere to social distancing measures.

In all this sport is merely mirroring the experience of society as a whole but there is a determination among most at the elite end that the show must go on, even if some are not one hundred per cent at ease with the situation at large.

“Everyone is obviously a bit anxious about catching it, which is understandable, but at the end of the day this is our job and you’re playing for your country,” said Ireland’s Callum Robinson prior to the team’s departure for Slovakia and before the positive test was returned.

“There is no way I’m not catching a flight to Ireland and a flight over to Slovakia and back, and then to Finland. No chance am I missing that.”

Meanwhile, an FAI statement on Tuesday evening announced the cessation from midnight of all adult amateur and underage football matches with the exception of elite football - namely the SSE Airtricity League, the Women’s National League, and all five underage national leagues - to comply with the Government's Level 3 restrictions.

Adult amateur and non-elite underage clubs can continue to train under non-contact conditions.