Dundalk continue to sweat on star turn Michael Duffy ahead of today’s €1.2 million Champions League decider in Latvia.
The winger’s partner, Emily, is due a baby and Duffy left Dublin airport before the team flight on Monday and raced home to Derry.
Dundalk have plans in place to fly him to Riga and boss Vinny Perth said last night: “It’s a massive decision for Michael.
“His decision is a life decision. We all want to make football decisions over the next 24 hours but I fully respect whatever decision he makes.
“The first child is obviously different than the second child. It shouldn’t be but it is and it’s pretty clear that you don’t get involved in those decisions.
“His partner was called into the hospital at 9.15am on Monday, a routine enough check up and they decided to keep her in.
“This stuff, you can never predict it. Nature is nature and when the time comes it comes.
“You hope it's going to happen on a Sunday night at 10.30pm and be all over by 11.00pm but it doesn't work that way.”
Perth continued: “You leave it to the player to make the decision and 90 per cent of the time the player makes the right decision about what’s right for their life.
“Michael is not somebody that you pressure or say anything to because he probably wouldn’t react well to being put under any sort of pressure.
“But we know exactly what is happening and we have Plan B, C and D ready because Michael is Plan A.”
As of yesterday, Dundalk had a late flight option for Duffy out of Belfast and another from Dublin airport this morning.
Perth said he expects Duffy to be in Dundalk’s match-day squad in the Latvian capital this evening.
But he is backing his team to cope without him should the travel plans fall apart at the eleventh hour.
“We like him and love him as a player but the way the squad is now, I think we can afford to miss a player if we need to," said Perth.
“The way we tend to train, we practice a lot of different scenarios and we’d have practiced at the weekend with him out of the team.
“It won’t be that alien to the lads because the shape we did on Saturday there were two different players involved off the left wing.
“It’s not something that’s going to be alien to anybody and we’re prepared for it.”
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