Steve Staunton and the rest of the Irish delegation will travel to Frankfurt this afternoon ahead of tomorrow's European Championship Group D fixtures meeting which is scheduled to get under way in the morning at the city's German FA headquarters.

The seven associations drawn in the group will be represented at the meeting. The delegates are likely to attempt to ensure the Republic's home games against leading nations Germany and the Czech Republic are scheduled for some time in 2007 when Croke Park is available to the FAI.

It is not yet clear whether Staunton will identify his wider preferences or confirm he will look to follow the lead of Mick McCarthy and Brain Kerr in recent tournaments by aiming to undertake the away trips to the qualification favourites at the earliest possible opportunity.

That is the approach being adopted by Welsh boss John Toshack who has made it clear he would like his younger players to have the opportunity to learn from big games in Germany and the Czech Republic before tackling the more winnable games over the course of next year.

"I know they (his players) are not ready yet, but the quicker they are blooded the quicker they will gain experience," said Toshack yesterday. "I have to take all this into account when we start debating the fixture schedule for the qualifiers.

"I'm being told we need a good start to get the momentum going - but the last set of qualifiers saw us win the first four and we still didn't qualify. The transitional period we are in means I hope we will get better as the group goes along.

"There are always times of a year when you do not want to play certain teams - because of temperatures for example - and we have a problem with September because we can't play at the Millennium Stadium (the stadium will host a Rolling Stones concert).

"One September game will have to be away, and I do have preferences - the Germans and the Czechs will have been in the World Cup in June and July. It may be a good time to play them, and the fixtures for this tournament means we can buy time.

"There are," he concluded, "two dates in October and then nothing until March. By then our youngsters will be better and more experienced. In 20 months from now we will still have six games to play in this group, by then some of my younger players will have 50-odd more first-team games under their belts. That would benefit them enormously."