Aaron Connolly’s international manager has revealed the striker is “perfectly well” and was a few centimetres from playing for his country.

The Albion striker missed the Republic of Ireland’s Euro 2020 qualifier, which they lost on penalties to Slovakia.

He has now returned to his club and will be unavailable for games against Wales and Finland.

Connolly was withdrawn when it was found he had been within two metres of a backroom staff member who tested positive for Covid-19 on the day of the match.

Along with Norwich striker Adam Idah, he had to drop out of the match because of what boss Stephen Kenny described as a “stringent” adherence to the Irish rules on close contact.

There is no suggestion Connolly will need to isolate.

Kenny stressed Connolly did NOT break any UK social-distancing guidelines.

He said: “The 2m rule in Ireland. It’s not in the UK. If they were in the UK they would have been perfectly entitled to play.

“Ireland has more stringent rules and we had to abide by the medical advice.

“We appealed it on the basis of (distance of) 1.7m as opposed to 1.9m, that’s how far they were away - as opposed to 2m which would have made them okay. That wasn’t deemed sufficient.

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“The two lads are fine. They feel fine, they feel perfectly well. We don’t have any issues in the camp, really, it was an issue with a non-football member of staff.

“It’s one of the rules we had to adhere to really, that was it.”