Michael O'Neill's men were grounded in John Lennon Airport
O’Neill and his squad were due to take off in their chartered flight from Liverpool in mid-afternoon on Wednesday but were still grounded in John Lennon Airport over two hours later before leaving at around 6.30pm.
It meant that the match day minus one press conference with O’Neill and captain Trai Hume had to be switched from the stadium in Luxembourg to the team hotel but, for the manager, no harm was done.
The Northern Ireland squad had assembled on Merseyside on Sunday and this week trained at Liverpool’s AXA Training Centre in Kirby, home to the Premier League champions, including on Wednesday before making their way to the airport.
Explaining the delay, an Irish FA spokesperson said: “The charter aircraft was late repositioning from Gatwick due to adverse weather conditions in the south of England, followed by some issues with ground handling which, combined, delayed the travel by approximately two hours.”
O’Neill stated: “We are a couple of hours later than we would have been but the fact we weren’t having to meet any deadline for training or anything like that was fine. No problem at all really and the players were fine.
“It is a bit frustrating because when you get all your work done and leave the hotel (in Liverpool) you want to try and get here as soon as possible to the hotel (in Luxembourg), but the fact is we have had three great days training at Liverpool.
“We did our matchday session in Liverpool that we would normally do here (in Luxembourg) and we will have one session in the morning to re-run things and go over set pieces. We will be ready to play.”
Asked why he had decided to train in Liverpool on Wednesday rather than at the stadium in Luxembourg, O’Neill said: “The reality of the situation is that you never know what level of privacy you have in the stadium when you train.
“We knew we'd played here recently, so we know the stadium, we know the pitch, that’s not something that they need to familiarise themselves with.
“The benefit of that is obviously we trained earlier, so the recovery period is longer for the players than what it would be if we were trained here tonight (Wednesday). Look, it's what a lot of the bigger nations do.
Michael O'Neill's men were grounded in John Lennon Airport
News Catch Up - Tuesday 2nd September
“When the bigger nations come to Belfast, they often don't train at the stadium, so we just felt that it was worth it in this situation. It will be different in the game on Sunday because we’d have to train in the stadium in Germany because you don’t have the luxury of sorting out a training facility that would be of a level and the Germans are under no obligation to help us with that, so we just felt that in this situation, given we’d played here so recently, the benefit of having a training session was far outweighed by doing the match day minus one session in Liverpool.”
This is not the first time a Northern Ireland flight to Luxembourg has caused issues.
In 2000, ahead of Sammy McIlroy’s first match as manager, there was a delay to the Luxembourg flight and fears it may not take off at all until eventually the squad got in the air.
The trip ended on a happy note with Northern Ireland winning the friendly in Luxembourg 3-1, with David Healy, then a youngster at Manchester United, scoring twice on his debut.