Irish preparations for Sunday afternoon’s Nations League clash with Wales have been thrown into disarray by a positive Covid-19 test for a member of the playing squad.
John Egan, Callum Robinson, Callum O’Dowda, Alan Browne and Derrick Williams have all been ruled out of Sunday’s match with one having tested positive and the others deemed close contacts.
In a statement released on Sunday morning the FAI said that the player cannot be named at this time and that he “tested positive on Friday after a negative test on Monday but his case is not related in any way to that of the backroom team member who tested positive on Monday last.”
The news follows the withdrawal from the squad of Aaron Connolly and Adam Idah who missed Thursday’s Euro 2020 playoff semi-final defeat to Slovakia because they were deemed to be close contacts of a member of the FAI non-playing staff who tested positive for the virus on Wednesday night.
The non-playing staff member had been included in the trip as a late replacement for another staff member who tested positive for the virus earlier in the week and was therefore self-isolating.
However, the FAI also confirmed on Sunday that the test result for the staff member who travelled to Bratislava now appears to have been a false positive after two further tests carried out on the individual on Saturday revealed no traces of Covid-19.
According to the FAI statement, the staff member who had tested positive in Bratislava was not deemed to have been a close contact of the original positive test from last week and was therefore cleared to travel.
The staff member tested negative on arrival in Slovakia on Tuesday, however, on Wednesday – the day before the clash with Slovakia – the staff member tested positive for the virus and four close contacts – which included Connolly and Idah – went in to self-isolation.
On Saturday David McGoldrick was also ruled out with a non-coronavirus related injury which means Stephen Kenny now has to select from a severely depleted playing squad for Sunday’s match.
