Lansdowne nightmare for FAI

Harassed FAI officials were yesterday attempting to rescue themselves from the embarrassment of having no suitable stadium in which to stage the home leg of their European championship tie against Macedonia.

When arrangements for the Group Eight fixtures were put in place earlier this year, they pencilled in Sunday, October 10th next year as the date for the Macedonian game at Lansdowne Road.

Unknown to them, apparently, was the fact that there was already a World Cup rugby fixture in place, for Lansdowne Road the previous day. And the IRFU has since confirmed that the stadium will will not be available for soccer purposes for the duration of the World Cup, a decision which was originally taken, long before the European soccer arrangements were made in February.

Now the FAI is attempting to retrieve a situation which is, at best, embarrassing and, at worst, potentially damaging to Ireland's hopes of qualification, by requesting that UEFA bring the game forward to June 9th.

At this point, however, it is by no means certain that the European body will agree to the proposed switch. Croatia and Yugoslavia are also scheduled to play on October 10th and traditionally UEFA has insisted on all potentially decisive qualifying games, being played simultaneously.

By staging the game against Macedonia in June, the FAI could hand a big advantage to Croatia and Yugoslavia who would then know exactly what is required to qualify, before they meet in Zagreb in October.

The other side of the coin is that if UEFA digs in and refuse to change the scheduled date, the Irish Association will be forced to seek an alternative domestic venue, with a huge drop in income.

Overall, these are troubled days for the FAI which earlier in the week, failed in its attempt to persuade UEFA to make a definitive announcement on the venue for the Republic of Ireland's game against Yugoslavia on November 18th.

The FAI now accepts that the fixture is almost certain to go ahead in Belgrade but rejects the proposal to defer confirmation of that decision until after the European Cup Winners' Cup game between FK Partizan and Lazio in the city next Thursday.

"We are unhappy with UEFA's action in delaying a decision," said FAI chief executive Bernard O'Byrne. "We need time to put all our arrangements for the game in place and the longer the decision is delayed, the more difficult this becomes.

"Among other things, we have to charter a plane and this cannot be done in the space of a week. We also have to take into consideration the needs of our supporters in their advance planning.

"We asked UEFA to give us three weeks notice and they were fully aware of our needs in this context. I am hoping that we will be able to advance the decision a little and there may be some word at the weekend. But a decision next week is leaving things a little late."

Having earlier heard and rejected a similar submission, there was no immediate evidence of a change in stance at UEFA headquarters yesterday, although a spokesman confirmed that it is monitoring the situation.