World Cup 2022: Wales could enter pre-tournament bubble due to Covid threat - Mooney
- Published
Wales are going to the World Cup for the first time since 1958
Wales are considering going into a pre-World Cup bubble to try to stop players catching Covid ahead of the tournament.
Football Association of Wales (FAW) chief executive Noel Mooney said: "We're all a bit on eggshells if something happens to a player that brings it into the camp."
He says plans for attending pre-World Cup events are under review.
Mooney says no-one wants to do anything that could harm Wales' aim of winning the tournament.
He said lifting the trophy "is obviously what we're going there to do".
Among the events Mooney mentioned as he expressed concerns was the planned public announcement by Robert Page of his squad to go to Qatar.
"There's a lot of talk now of us going back towards this bubble situation, which we thought we were kind of out of," Mooney told BBC Radio Wales Sport .
"We've got a lot of events leading up to travelling and we're really thinking about mitigating the risk because you've got the manager going to do that [public] announcement.
"You've got us - and lots of our other people - doing loads of events leading up to it."
Mooney also referenced the "festival for football lovers up in Wrexham" among events that are of concern while the Office for National Statistics says Covid rates in Wales are estimated to be at their highest for 11 weeks,
He described that gathering, which takes place from 11-14 November, as "a big opportunity for fans to come together and celebrate the fan culture and the music and fashion and culture and art, and Cymraeg, behind what we do up in Wrexham".
Mooney added: "There's lots of events going on, they're just everywhere.
"But the problem we have is we've got medics talking to us very seriously about, you know, us kind of pulling back from some of these events.
"We'd love to have had a big event to say goodbye to everybody at a training session or something like that.
"But that's even having to be looked at - the scale of that, the amount of people around.
"Because if for all of the pomp and the ceremony around us going and the wave-offs and all that - it's lovely, it's a beautiful time to be Welsh, it's a beautiful time to be from Cymru, going out to the world, five billion people watching us - but we're all a bit on eggshells if something happens to a player that brings it into the camp or something; it's just there."
Restating Wales' ambition of lifting the World Cup, Mooney said: "We're going there to bring the trophy home and anything that puts that at risk, we have to look at and think about.
"As much as we'd love to go out and embrace everybody and kiss everybody to say goodbye, you've got to think about the risk around that.
"I know our medics are fantastic - they've protected us from everything - so they'll be in our ear talking us through, making sure we're tested properly and making sure we get out there safely and we do our stuff for Cymru."