DANIEL Lafferty missed out on Northern Ireland's final 23-man squad for the European Championships because of a lack of first-team football at Burnley.

Lafferty was part of a 28-man squad that has been training in Manchester and Dublin, but the left-back was one of five names cut from that group and the squad that will represent Northern Ireland in their first major tournament since1986.

Boss Michael O'Neill said Lafferty had been watched closely, but the 27-year-old made just 15 appearances for League One Oldham this term, across two loan spells, and never featured for the Clarets.

"Daniel was one that we'd watched closely, he was a little bit unfortunate in that he was on loan at Oldham and the best chance you have of being involved is to be playing first-team football," said O'Neill.

"He had played virtually no first-team football in the first half of the season at Burnley, he'd had a few shoulder injuries and then he got the chance to go out on loan, was doing well, but his club called him back as cover and he ended up then when he didn't play.

"Again, he was in that situation where he wasn't involved in first-team football."

Lafferty saw his place on the plane for France go to MK Dons' Lee Hodson, who had a spell on loan at Kilmarnock where he filled in in both full-back positions.

"Lee took the decision to go to Kilmarnock, he pushed his manager to get out on loan and we had watched Lee consistently not only play at right-back, but also at left-back so it was the versatility that we saw in Lee that got him the nod over Michael Smith or Daniel Lafferty, that was the key," added O'Neill.

Lafferty and the four others who missed out on the final squad, Liam Boyce, Michael Smith, Ben Reeves and Billy McKay, were told by O'Neill before the squad left their Dublin training camp to return to Belfast ahead of the friendly with Belarus on Friday night.

"I notified the players who weren't going on Wednesday," said O'Neill. "I felt it was fairer to them not to prolong that to be honest.

"It would have been very difficult to play the game (on Friday) and try and tell the players before announcing this, there just wouldn't have been time to do it.

"If they hadn't been in the 23 players stripped last night they would have had a fairer idea. I thought it was fairer to them to speak to them all on an individual basis when there was a little bit more privacy.

"It's not an easy thing to do but I think the players were respectful of the decision and we move on with the tournament."