Ireland face venue headache over World Cup play-off
Even if the Irish football team qualify for a World Cup play-off place by winning tonight’s crunch match against Switzerland, they may be left with nowhere in the country to play the home tie, it emerged today.
The draw for the World Cup play-offs is on Friday, when the dates for the matches – which are due to be played in November – will also be announced.
Lansdowne Road is booked next month for rugby internationals and today GAA President Sean Kelly warned Croke Park might not be made available.
The hard-won change to Rule 42 last April, which allows rugby and soccer to be played at the GAA stadium, only applies when Lansdowne Road is closed for redevelopment, Mr Kelly said.
“The issue is quite clear – nobody said to us last year when we were redrafting the Rule 42 motion for Congress that this might possibly happen, so it wasn’t included in the rule.
“The rule is very specific that when Lansdowne Road is closed for redevelopment Croke Park will be available.
“I think that everybody would accept that at this point in time with only a couple of weeks to go, that it wouldn’t be logical or practical to try calling a special congress to change what we had great difficulty getting through in the first place last April,” Mr Kelly told RTE Radio.
A spokesman for the FAI said they would be waiting to see if the national team qualified for a play-off spot and the dates of the matches before making any comment on where the home game would be played.
