World Cup: McCarthy is all smiles

Mick McCarthy will have a great big smile on his face whatever pot luck is inflicted upon Ireland in tomorrow’s World Cup draw in South Korea.

McCarthy and his pugnacious squad are just happy, having at last laid their play-off bogey to rest by qualifying for a major tournament at the third time of asking, to be there.

After surviving the mystery tours of such far-flung football outposts as seedy Skopje, bomb-blasted Belgrade, the earthquake-threatened Turkish city of Bursa and Tehran over recent years nothing now is going to faze the fighting Irish in the Far East.

‘‘I’m not bothered who we get or where we play,’’ said McCarthy.

‘‘That’s not just some blase or happy-go-lucky Irish response. My very pragmatic approach is that we’ve qualified with 24 points, and it is not for us to be concerned.

‘‘We’ll take anything and prepare accordingly. My only slight preference - and it is slight - is that we are in Japan because we’ve lined up a possible base there at Izumo. But if not it doesn’t matter that much because the chances are we’ll go there at some stage.

‘‘But we will be frightened of nobody and should get respect from everybody. People have only to look at our record in the qualifiers to see that.

‘‘People gave us no chance when we were drawn in the same group as Holland and Portugal. But in the end we’ve knocked out the Dutch - who would have been among the favourites to actually win the World Cup - and we’ve finished with the same number of points as the Portuguese who still are.

‘‘The challenge was to qualify, and we’ve done that even if it meant we had to go through the play-off route again.

‘‘I’m delighted to have done what Big Jack (Charlton) did and got Ireland to the finals. It’s nice to feel I can have a pint with him now as an equal.’’

Whatever comes out of the pot tomorrow, Ireland can hardly feel more daunted than in their two previous World Cup finals.

Tortuous routes at Italia 90 and in the United States in 1994 saw the country first of all edged out by the hosts in the quarter-finals in Rome and by Holland in Florida.

It was sweet then to beat the present-day Dutch side in Dublin in September - the result which gave Ireland the belief they could make the finals again at last.

Victory over Cyprus a month later completed an unbeaten 10-match run - with seven victories - and the play-off triumph finally materialised in Tehran against Iran three weeks ago.

That takes McCarthy to South Korea, where he awaits tomorrow’s draw which - it is already known - will allow World Cup holders France to open the tournament in Seoul on May 31.

They will be joined on the mainland of Korea by the joint-hosts, who will be top seeds in another of the eight groups.

China have also been placed there for ‘‘economic and geographic reasons’’.

The Japanese are keen to have Brazil based in their country - because football there owes much to an influx of Brazilian players for the launch of the J-League and if that happens it can be assumed Argentina will go to Korea for the first round where they would stay for the later stages if they topped their opening group.

But McCarthy is ready for anything and already knows the worse news. It will be hot and physically debilitating no matter where the team plays and whoever they face - and, with Guinness £7 a pint, it will cost the Green Army a fortune.

The FAI's official travel courier Ray Treacy has already made trips to Japan to assess possible hotel bases for the squad, and McCarthy and the FAI’s logistics officer Eddie Corcoran have been in South Korea for nearly a week too on similar fact-finding missions.

Ireland’s first World Cup warm-up matches are already in place, both in Dublin, against Russia on February 13 and Denmark on March 27. There are likely to be two more in April and May, plus the possibility of a mouth-watering clash with Argentina if the two are not drawn in the same World Cup group.

But the suggestion of a 10-day stay on the west coast of America now seems a non-starter. McCarthy and his men are more likely to go straight to either Japan or Korea some time around May 20.