The Republic Of Ireland's hopes of qualifying for the European Championship finals in 2000 took a knock yesterday when UEFA revealed that Mick McCarthy's team will be amongst the third tier of seeds when the draw is made in January.

The Irish team were second seeds in each of their last two qualifying tournaments and while they failed to qualify for either the European Championships in England or next year's World Cup, they did finish second in their group on both occasions. This, it was hoped, would have been enough to maintain the ranking, but unfortunately every individual result was included in the calculations.

That resulted in a situation in which the Bulgarians have pipped Ireland for the last slot in the second group of nine nations and McCarthy's team has effectively been left with a ranking of 19th in Europe.

"This is a blow all right," said McCarthy yesterday. "It's disappointing to think that we missed out on tier two, but if that is the decision of UEFA there is little we can do about it, we will just have to get on with it."

At the top of the new list is Germany, with Spain, Romania, Russia, England, Yugoslavia, Scotland, Italy and Norway all also included in Group One. Group Two, meanwhile, consists of Greece, Turkey, the Czech Republic, France, Austria, Portugal, Denmark and Bulgaria.

Ireland top Group Three which is completed by Switzerland, Sweden, Ukraine, Lithuania, Slovakia, Finland, Israel and Georgia. The rest of the groups have yet to be released by UEFA, although they will have to be made public ahead of the draw for the European qualifying tournament which takes place in Ghent on January 18th.

The general secretary of the FAI, Bernard O'Byrne, admitted yesterday that he was disappointed, but said that everybody at the association had known that this might happen. "We knew that it was going to be a very close run thing and this is what we feared might happen," he added.

"We haven't seen the exact calculations yet, but as we understand it we lost out to Bulgaria on a fraction of a percentage point when the sums were done up, which is unfortunate but we were always aware that something like this might happen as a result of some of the reversals we suffered over the course of the qualifying tournaments."

In retrospect, it appears the points dropped against teams who finished below us - against Macedonia, Lithuania and Iceland in out World Cup group and against Northern Ireland, Liechtenstein and, particularly Austria during the Euro '96 campaign - have come back to haunt us.

"At the end of the day it's a mathematical calculation and we knew what the consequences were likely to be at the time so we can have no complaints. This is the same system that they've used for the last few years and so it's not as if they're shifting things around to suit one country or another," said O'Byrne.

The fear now would be that our seeding will result in the Republic being drawn with two particularly strong sides in the group stages of the next European Championships which, in turn, could contribute to a further slip in the rankings.

Possible combinations that might well result if such a scenario coming to pass might be Germany, Spain or Italy from Group One and France, Portugal or Croatia from Group Two, but some good fortune in Ghent could also offer McCarthy's men the chance to repair the damage done over the last four years.

Scotland and Norway, despite their success in recent qualifying tournaments, look to be the weakest of the nine teams in the top tier, while of the second level teams, the Austrians, Turks and Czechs all proved to be a little erratic over the past year.

"We would certainly hope," added O'Byrne, "that with a young and emerging side, we can be one of the countries that upsets these rankings and start to climb straight back up the list, although obviously a kind draw at the outset would be a help to our cause."

Yesterday's announcement by UEFA is likely to be followed over the coming weeks by confirmation from the organisation's Competitions Committee that the usual bout of haggling over fixtures which accompanies the draw has become a thing of the past.

Under a new system, devised at a meeting in Helsinki in September, all of the group fixtures will be pre-determined with the draw simply assigning each country to its place in the overall schedule, in much the same way as the recent World Cup draw in Marseille did for next year's finals tournament.

Euro 2000 Seedings

Tier 1 - Germany, Spain, Romania, Russia, England, Yugoslavia, Scotland, Italy and Norway.

Tier 2 - Greece, Turkey, Czech Republic, France, Austria, Portugal, Denmark, Bulgaria.

Tier 3 - Republic of Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, Ukraine, Lithuania, Slovakia, Finland, Israel, Georgia.

Draw takes place in Ghent on January 18th.