Rooney is hoping to draw ‘major power’ in World Cup qualifiers

CHIEF executive of the FAI Fran Rooney was in no doubt as to which teams he would like to see in Ireland’s group when the draw for the qualifying tournament of World Cup 2006 is made tomorrow in Frankfurt.

"A good group for us and for our fans would be England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and ourselves. But, to be serious, it would be desirable that we drew a major power; a big team would enhance our TV revenue and be good for our sponsors," he said.

Ireland go into the draw with 50 other European nations in the second group of seeds. The Republic were amongst the top seeds for the current European Championship but a failure to qualify led to relegation.

FIFA officials and personalities from the entertainment, as well as the sporting world, will complete the arrangements for the qualifying tournaments for Europe, Africa, North and Central America, the Caribbean and Oceania.

There was a total entry of 195 national teams plus Caledonia, who are associate members of FIFA.

The qualifying process is already well underway in other regions such as Asia, where they started on October 24 with a preliminary round involving 14 nations designed to produce seven winners. They will join with 25 seeded nations in tomorrow's draw.

The footballing nations of South America set off on the long road to Germany on September 6 with 10 teams contesting four automatic qualifying spots in a league format.

The fifth-placed team will join nations from Oceania, Asia, North and Central America and the Caribbean in a play-off round.

In Europe, the 51 nations will be drawn into eight qualifying groups, seeded according to their FIFA ranking three groups of seven teams each and five groups of six.

The eight winners and the two best runners-up will automatically qualify The other six runners-up will be paired for two-legged play-offs with the winners going through to fill

Europe's quota of 13 qualifiers and host nation, Germany. It has already been decided that England, Spain, Italy and France will be allocated to six-team groups. The other top seeds are Portugal, Sweden, Czech Republic and Turkey.

The three seven team groups will include the three lowest rated teams Andorra, Luxembourg and Kazakhstan. The draw will be made backwards with these three teams allocated groupings first.

The process of qualifying is also already underway in Africa: a starting field of 51 will first be whittled down to 30 for the preliminary draw. These teams go forward to a second qualifying phase featuring five groups, with group winners qualifying.

Oceania will start off with two groups of five comprised of 10 members and New Caledonia. New Zealand and Australia join the qualifying tournament at the next stage with the top two teams from the preliminary round making a group of six.

The winners of this group will then meet the runners-up in a two-legged play-off with the winners playing a team from North and Central America, the Caribbean and Asia.