Cold comfort on the Russian front

Despite the respective seedings for yesterday's draw the bookies make Russia, rather than Ireland, favourites to top Group 10 and their view was endorsed last night by Swiss coach Jakob Kuhn who feels they will turn out to be the team to beat.

"Russia are a good side," he said. "We played them twice recently (in the World Cup qualifiers when the Swiss lost 0-1 and 4-0) and it was very tough in both games. They are a stronger team than Ireland in my opinion.

"Russia has a lot of good young players," he added. "They were very impressive in World Cup qualification and I think they will cause Ireland a lot of problems in the group as well as everybody else in the group."

While the draw seems to present the Irish with a decent opportunity to build on their fine performance in the World Cup qualifiers FAI general secretary Brendan Menton admited that, financially at least, it something of a disappointment.

"It's not a great draw," he said. "But we have already covered off the Irish market and the UK market while we've also done a highlights deal for the rest of the world.

"What we haven't done yet is second party rights, that is our opponents' rights to our home games. Switzerland are one of the more financially attractive teams in the third pool while Russia is obviously a big country even if it's not the most wealthy and it's a little hard to tell what the TV market there is like. What looks certain, though, is that money will be a lot less than when we played Portugal and Holland."

Some consolation, though, came in the form of a new deal with Laurent St John's Bridge Television company and international agency UFA for the third party rights to the games. The deal is reportedly worth double the figure was last time around and is said to represent roughly 20 per cent of the association's television income.