Danes on for winter return to help FAI

FAI officials have reached broad agreement with their Danish counterparts regarding the rescheduling of their friendly international for November following the decision to cancel last night's game due to the conditions at Lansdowne Road.

The loss of the game means that, instead of making a profit of roughly £200,000 on the match, the association will end up out of pocket to the tune of roughly £50,000, most of which was spent on bringing the two squads to Dublin and accommodating them for the early part of this week.

Now the association is hoping to salvage something from the situation by refixing the game for one of the two dates set aside for World Cup qualification play-offs. The obvious difficulty is the game is now contingent on neither team being involved in those matches.

"The Danes made it clear to us that they want to come back and they want to play this game," said FAI chief executive Bernard O'Byrne yesterday. "So we have agreed on November. We hope not to be involved in the play-offs; we intend to have qualified by then."

The two organisations have also confirmed their arrangement that the Republic pay a return visit to Copenhagen and, although no date has been set, O'Byrne said yesterday the time frame involved is, "the next two and a half to three years".

O'Byrne expressed disappointment with the loss of yesterday's game and admitted it was a blow that having "expected to make money on the game, we are now in a position where there are expenses to be met," but, not surprisingly, he went on to say, "what has happened underlines the fact the association needs to be establishing alternative streams of revenue so that it is less reliant on having friendlies against teams that may or may not be seen as "attractive".

"It also would have helped, of course, if we had had a stadium, with a roof on it because there would have been no question of the terraces being dangerous or the pitch being covered in snow."

In fact, it appears the terraces as well as the pedestrian routes into them were the main concern yesterday morning when the decision to call the game off was made.

"The terraces and the entrances to the ground were very dangerous when we were up there with the Garda this morning," said O'Byrne. "And while the pitch was marginal, if the frost forecast for this evening did set in then I would think that the pitch could well have become unplayable during the course of the game."

"In the circumstances," he concluded, "this was the only sensible decision that we could have made."

Ireland manager Mick McCarthy agreed, remarking that, "the pitch might be playable now but there's every chance it will freeze over again later, and there's a risk to the players as well as the fans that I don't want to take.

"It is a blow because you always want to play, and we haven't had a game since November. But I don't think it is going to seriously disrupt our preparations for the World Cup qualifiers away to Cyprus and Andorra at the end of March."

Denmark's coach Morten Olsen added that, "it would have been more like ice skating out there, and that is no good to either side or the supporters."

The FAI, meanwhile, now faces the task of reimbursing all of those amongst the 31,000 ticket holders who had purchased their tickets. The process will begin over the next couple of days but yesterday all of those seeking refunds were asked to return their tickets to the clubs, leagues or other places of purchase.

Meanwhile, The Harp Lager FAI Cup third round replay between St Patrick's Athletic and Longford Town which was postponed on Tuesday night has been refixed for Sunday, at 3.15 p.m. at Richmond Park.