Republic of Ireland U21 manager Jim Crawford has said that the camp has not been disrupted by the state of flux surrounding their squad availability for Tuesday's European Championship qualifier away to Montenegro.
Their opponents are currently on the UK - until Monday anyway - and Germany’s red list regarding Covid-19 quarantine restrictions, meaning that the manager has had to name an extended panel for the game in case only home-based players can travel.
The uncertainty isn’t helped by the fact that they have a home qualifier against Luxembourg in Tallaght tomorrow evening.
Montenegro will come off the UK's red list at 4am on Monday, but with the Irish squad due to depart for the game on Saturday, it's now unlikely to change anything for the panel unless special dispensation is granted prior to that.
Regardless of what happens, the manager said that it wasn’t distracting them from Friday’s Group F clash with a Luxembourg side that earned a point in the reverse fixture last month.
"(It’s) certainly not a distraction because I’m fully focused on the game tomorrow against Luxembourg," Crawford said of the situation.
"There’s no word, we still don’t know, we’re just carrying on regardless. We've got a group coming in later on and they’ll train and we’ve just got to prepare for what we were instructed from UEFA.
"Whether that changes between now and Tuesday I don’t know, but we just can't rely on anybody else in the situation like this. We need to prepare and prepare well. Montenegro will be a really difficult challenge, as they’ve shown already competing against the likes of Sweden and Italy. They competed very well."
This will be Ireland’s first home game of qualifying after away games with Bosnia and Herzegovina - a 2-0 win – and that trip to Luxembourg last time out.
The side are looking forward to playing in front of a crowd in Tallaght once again and Crawford expects the home support to be excited by what they see.
"We’ve got to be patient as players too. It’s important that we don’t start rushing teams and forcing things.
"Luxembourg will come, they will be organised. it’ll be a different pitch to what we played on over in Luxembourg because Tallaght’s surface is fantastic pitch as we all know. It's big so it's up to us to utilise it and to exploit the spaces.
"We’ve got a game-plan and the players are disciplined, they're clever enough, they’re talented enough to stick to that
"It's just great to be able to play in front of fans in Tallaght Stadium.
"The players are really looking forward to it. The buzz last year in the campaign playing in Tallaght was great.
"I was speaking to a couple of players during the week and they loved the whole atmosphere that Tallaght brought to the campaign last year. They’re looking for more of that.
"One thing I can say, the fans will be impressed with the group we have here because we are a very good bunch."
Follow Republic of Ireland U21s v Luxembourg U21s via our liveblog on RTÉ.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app, watch live on RTÉ2 and the RTÉ Player from 5pm.
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