There are always positives and negatives drawn about team performances but the FAI are in a storm of the same about Covid-19 tests that has rolled from the eve of the game in Slovakia last week to early morning departures for Helsinki today.
At midnight last night the second retest of the latest player, the third member of the FAI party to have initially tested positive, cam back as confirmed.
The first retest came back as a negative. The same has happened to the member of FAI staff from Bratislava but his second test also came back as negative. His initial test meant that Adam Idah and Aaron Connolly were removed from the playing squad when they didn’t need to be.
Fallibility
Reason enough then for the FAI and Stephen Kenny to keep on asking for retests when there is clearly no level of infallibility about them.
The latest player to test positive was not tagged as having close contacts in the squad so is the only player not to travel. For reasons of privacy, the FAI cannot name him and it is only when we see either the plane manifest or image from the first training session that we will confirm who it is.
It is harsh on the player, hard on the hopes of the team who may feel that the Slovakia game slipped away on the basis of a bad test but the damage from the whole scenario runs deeper.
False Results
It is known that false positives and false negatives do arise from current testing for the virus. By having it happen in such a high profile world of elite sport it raises questions about the integrity of the system and causes doubt about it in the wider population.
As we return to work, as children go to school, as 100,000 tests are taken each week, we believe that positives have an impact and that negatives mean everything is OK.
If we lose faith in that, then there is a major impact on public and individual confidence in one of the bedrock of our emerging from this quicker than might be the case.
If we are returning to workplaces based on the veracity of test and trace, that becomes an issue.
In a sporting context if we are to hope for a playing in full of the All Ireland Championships and the Guinness Six Nations, then we need to rely on confidence in the testing system.
Three Questions
There are three questions that arise immediately.
Is every test now subject to at least two retests to be sure, to be sure? Does that mean the cost of the testing regime is now to treble? Do we only test again on positives because that’s not the answer we wanted?
Finally, the situation with the FAI also switches on the spotlight on their own testing regime which was won at public tender by a company with close ties to the FAI Medical Director Dr Alan Byrne.
Regardless of the fact that this was based on a winning bid in which Byrne had no hand, act or part, the perception is not a good one. If the original tests under a UEFA regime were positive, but then the retests under an FAI regime were negative, might not UEFA, or the FA of the team we might be playing against, call for a retest of the retest because of the potential conflict of interest?
It would certainly make anyone’s head hurt. Just so long as they don’t have a fever or a new persistent cough as well.
