[ad_1]
Late on Wednesday afternoon in Bratislava, just as people in Ireland were dizzyingly assimilating the implications of the Covid outage at the Slovak camp, the visiting delegation learned they had their own problems.
Confirmation of a positive case in the travel group set off the chain of events that resulted in Aaron Connolly and Adam Idah missing the game that ended Ireland’s hopes for Euro 2020.
Connolly was going to start, with Idah seen as a live option from the bank. The young people only knew they were upset after breakfast Thursday morning, and to their horror they found that the simple question of where they were sitting on the plane had excluded them from the biggest international game of their young lives.
They hadn’t even interacted with the Covid-positive traveler in line in front of them.
Stephen Kenny’s unhappiness was slightly disguised in his interviews, and he has naturally been instrumental in discussions of how and why this situation happened.
The predominant factor, more than anything, is the unpredictability of a virus that did indeed have some kind of impact on the preparations for each of UEFA’s matches. The big clubs and nations have not been able to prevent Covid from altering their plans in some way.
But the stakes in this loss are so high for the FAI that they have to wonder if they could have done something different. This is what happened during the retracing process, and in hindsight there will be regrets.
The crux of the problem dates back to the beginning of the week. As part of the UEFA match protocols, the entire Irish party had to be put to the test at the team hotel in Castleknock.
Tight
It is customary for players to come on international duty and be able to reunite with family and friends, but Covid-19 has tightened regulations.
Ireland needed special permission from the government to allow players living in the UK to enter without having to follow isolation guidelines and the terms and conditions revolve around staying in a ‘bubble’, only leaving their accommodation for training and matches.
This also extended to the trip to Slovakia, with the group confined to their residence and a negative test of no more than three days required to enter the stadium. Therefore, Monday in Dublin was scheduled for the test of the proposed roving delegation.
On Tuesday morning, it emerged that a back-room staff member, an FAI employee, had tested positive and was unable to travel to Slovakia.
A decision was made to remove two other back-room staff members within the bubble who were considered close contacts because they had had lunch with the person in question. HSE guidelines were used to determine who needed to restrict movement and stay home.
At this time, the call was made to bring in two backroom replacements, including a staff member who had been with the Under-21 group, selected on the basis that he tested negative last Saturday. This person returned another negative test Tuesday morning before the flight with the team.
However, on Wednesday morning, the three new faces in the senior team bubble (late callback Josh Cullen and the two backroom staff members) had to take another tryout for UEFA purposes because they were not present at Monday’s round. Late on Wednesday night, staff arriving from the Under-21 group that was declared negative for Covid on Tuesday morning found that they had tested positive this time and were told to stay in their room.
The domino effect caused an unexpected crisis for the Irish group. They had to go back to the flight plan, which showed that the positive case was sitting on its own in a row of two seats (the charter flight had two seats in each row). Idah and Connolly were in the back row. Two other staff members were in the front row.
Close
Aaron Connolly
SPORTS ARCHIVE
Masks were worn on the fateful flight, but HSE’s guidelines on its interpretation of close contacts list a possible example of “sitting in 2 seats of someone who has COVID-19 on public transportation or on an airplane.”
The FAI had to go back to the HSE to describe the details of their situation and the discussions eventually concluded that Idah and Connolly qualified as close contacts as they were sitting 1.7 meters and 1.9 meters apart respectively during the flight and staff members. they were in a similar position.
Insured
The quintet were not allowed to leave the hotel until later Friday, when the FAI secured a private plane for its three employees, ensuring they could leave the country and isolate themselves in Ireland. Brighton and Norwich made arrangements to bring Idah and Connolly to the UK.
Connolly had taken a slight hit, but he was in the first XI and was seen as a powerful attack weapon. The Galwegian tweeted a short message simply saying ‘1.9’ late Thursday night, but deleted it shortly after. This reflected an instinctive frustration at the rejection of appeals to the Irish health authorities for an exception.
Attempts were made on match day before hopes were dashed about four hours before kickoff. High-level FAI figures eventually came to the conclusion that they had to follow HSE’s advice because the continuation of Irish sport, including all international games, depends on following their rules. Taking a chance or a risk was just never going to happen.
Kenny noted in his interview with Sky that the Irish definition of distancing is stricter than that of the UK, a frustrating reality, but the visiting group was operating under Irish terms and conditions due to their direct return to Dublin for the clash with Wales and then with another state. -Authorized travel to Finland.
It may be an unfortunate phrase under the circumstances, but they had to take their medicine.
Reviewing what happened has led to introspection and discussion of flight plans and other details, but there is an element of speculation involved in each theory.
In general, the concept of international soccer during a pandemic is under pressure due to the amount of travel required for teams to meet before any group travel they take.
UEFA has faced a number of sticking points this week and the feeling is that more are inevitable across the continent from now until the end of the UEFA Nations League double-legged game. However, they will ask the associations to be attentive to the management of their bubble.
From an Irish perspective, the questions revolve around the logic of deciding to incorporate staff replacements into their version, even if they had test results that seemed to show they were clear.
The tracing process cannot make definitive conclusions about where the virus was contracted, but it is correct to say that the two FAI employees who tested positive were in the same room on Monday for a trade event related to the launch of a kit and players were involved. in that wide gathering.
This may or may not prove significant. All the players and management received negative test results from their exam on Monday, but the lesson we’ve all learned from Covid-19 is that it doesn’t show up instantly. A negative test one day can turn positive the next time, as the unfortunate member of the Bratislava staff discovered.
To reveal
Kenny’s group was examined again on Friday upon their return from Slovakia, and doctors awaited the results on Friday night. The feelings of apprehension around the group are understandable. They will reveal whether the virus was spreading within your bubble or not; if that’s the case, more questions will follow.
The unfortunate episode was not helped by the ridiculous and mischievous fake WhatsApp rumors that were widely circulated during the game.
The players’ clubs created a communication vacuum by not wanting Connolly and Idah to be named in the FAI statement confirming the new staff case. Brighton has a policy that they were following, but the exclusion of that detail from the FAI communiqué left room for silly fiction related to mis-registration.
Another complication was that the FAI communication team was directly affected by the outbreak, resulting in a situation where they had no media officers present on the ground.
They had to work remotely to communicate with stadium staff and bring Kenny to his rights holder interviews with a Sky reporter in England, so there was a general information problem that fueled the confusion.
Of course, all of this would have become a footnote if the penalty shoot-out had gotten out of the way of Ireland. Instead, the Covid drama will be inextricably linked to this escaped story.
[ad_2]