Following the withdrawal of the United States from the tournament yesterday it seems many of the teams preparing for the World Cup Qualifier in Amiens and Abbeville have lost much of their appetite for the competition.
It will, however, get under way today with the number of teams going through to next year's World Cup finals reduced to six - the seventh-placed nation will play off against the USA, before February next year, in a best-of-three series for the final qualifying spot.
Initially the Americans insisted they would still compete in France despite last week's events in their homeland, citing the "healing power of sport" as their motivation, but they informed the International Hockey Federation yesterday they would not, after all, be travelling. The earliest they could have arrived in France would have been Thursday by which time they should have played two of their pool matches. They will, though, be given the chance to qualify in that play-off series.
Proceedings, then, start today with the match between India and Uruguay, the first of 56 games over the next fortnight.
Ireland were due to open their Pool A campaign today but the withdrawal of Kenya, due to a lack of funding, means they must wait until Wednesday to see action when they play India. Both pools are now made up of seven teams and the top two in each automatically qualify for the next year's World Cup finals in Australia with the third and fourth-placed teams battling it out in the cross-overs for two more qualifying places.
England are favourites to top Pool A with India and the Ukraine the likeliest to contest second place.
Ireland, though, are hopeful of upsetting the odds. While recent disappointments, most notably the failure to qualify for the Olympic Games, might have lowered expectations this time around captain Rachel Kohler believes the draw has given the team its most realistic hope yet of qualifying for a major tournament.
"Before we've often had the likes of Spain, England and Germany all in our pool so even if you told yourself you had a chance, in the back of your mind you weren't so sure. But this time there's a quiet air of confidence.
"Providing we play to our ability they're all beatable and that's the first time we've been able to say that. It's there for the taking - if we have enough self-belief between now and the end of September we're on our way to Australia," said Kohler.
Coach Riet Kuper, who regards India as the biggest threat to Ireland's top two ambitions in the pool, is more cautious than her captain but believes her team "has a chance". "I would like to go for automatic qualification by finishing second in the group (behind England) because the cross-overs could be very tough - I think there's a chance, but I'm not saying we will do it.
"We should be right up there, we have a chance to qualify but we just have to go out and do it," said Kuper.
Maximum points will be expected from the games against Uruguay and Kazakstan, neither of whom Kuper has seen play, with a defeat the most probable result in the game with England. The key pool fixtures, then, will be against hosts France, with whom Ireland drew earlier this month, Ukraine and India.
