EURO 2012 QUALIFYING DRAW: "I THINK from the football perspective," observed Brian Kerr as a few feet away FAI chief executive John Delaney started to make his way out of the Palace of Culture, "Trapattoni is quite happy. I would think that the association less so. I think selling expensive seats for games with Andorra, Armenia, Macedonia . . . well, I don't know if I'd want to be buying at 60, 70 or 80 euro a piece per game."

With capacity down for the 2012 campaign from over 70,000 at Croke Park to 50,000 at the Aviva Stadium, the ordinary tickets should, in fact, more or less take care of themselves thanks to the association’s block-booking scheme although there may now be a few going spare down the away end.

The highly-pricey Vantage club packages, however, don’t look any more of a bargain this morning with yesterday’s draw failing to pair the Republic of Ireland with any country whose name is going to set the pulse racing.

Delaney’s line yesterday was that the draw had been kind in other ways with the improved prospect of qualification compensating for the more immediate absence of a real money spinner and on the team’s prospects, at least, he and Trapattoni’s predecessor share some common ground.

“It’s not a particularly attractive group from the point of view of the fans,” observed the Dubliner who was present to see his own Faroe Islands team land world champions Italy as well as Serbia, Northern Ireland, Slovenia and Estonia. “But it’s certainly a winnable group or at least a runners-up spot should be attained reasonably handily, I would think.

“Certainly, from the players’ point of view, I think they’ll be looking at it thinking ‘that’s a fairly straightforward sort of group, I think we should be capable of doing it’, although last time around Russia were hard going for us, we drew at home and then the one away was a tough one, the Russians tend to play well at home.

“If Hiddink (who welcomed the opportunity to pit his wits against the “wily old fox,” after hearing he and Trapattoni would be meeting again) stays on then they’ll be a power in the group and Ireland have a bit of history with Slovakia; it didn’t go too well in either match last time although they narrowly won the first one after having had a sticky time of it. And Macedonia were poor enough last time around although they can be awkward.”

Kerr was a little wary of the effect that coming up against so many sides from behind the old “iron curtain” might have on members of the Irish team.

“They won’t be as familiar with the players or the names or what they do and from that point of view you have to educate them a little bit, tell them everything, if you want to go that route. You have to start from scratch with all the video stuff.

“There’ll be lot of stuff about Russia even though they won’t be in the World Cup but that means they’ll be fresh when the tournament starts, so from that point of view you won’t have that chance of catching them early.”

As for his own side’s group, Kerr observed: “There are pluses; the travelling isn’t very difficult and commercially, having Italy is important. We’ve three of the World Cup qualifiers in our group, so it won’t be easy football-wise and Slovenia were the outstanding team in the fourth pot. But we’ve played Serbia; I know them well and we played Italy two competitions back and did reasonably well, ran them close, scored in both games.

“On a personal level,” he added, “I’m looking forward to playing Italy and I’m delighted we’re playing Northern Ireland, which will be like a semi-home match.”

Northern Ireland manager Nigel Worthington seemed fairly pleased with the draw himself, insisting it was a good draw for his side as well as a major challenge.

Fabio Capello, meanwhile, claimed England had been handed one of the toughest assignments of any of the leading teams after seeing his side land in Group G along with Switzerland, Bulgaria, Wales and Montenegro.

“I think that the worst groups were A (Germany, Turkey, Austria, Belgium, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan) and G, and we will play in G. It is a tough group. I prefer the smaller group because we play less games, but it is tough, very tough.”

The Italian still seemed confident that his side will progress, remarking: “I have confidence in my team. I am sure we will play a fantastic qualification for the European Championship.”

Craig Levein will not have it easy in his first campaign as Scotland manager with his side having to battle Spain, the Czech Republic and Lithuania for qualification from Group I while France head up a group that also includes Romania and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Their manager wasn’t in Warsaw for the draw and when he was asked on Saturday why his fellow countryman had not travelled, Michel Platini replied that he did not think Raymond Domenech believed he would be in charge of the team for its next campaign.