Mick McCarthy, will get his first taste of the venues for next summer's World Cup finals within a couple of weeks when he travels to the South Korean city of Busan for the finals draw, which is scheduled to take place at 10 a.m. (Irish time) on Saturday, December 1st.

The Republic of Ireland manager is expected to travel to the Far East earlier that week in an attempt to scout out possible training camps and other facilities for his squad, and will probably stop off in Japan first.

The FAI hopes to firm up a good many of its plans over the coming days but, as of last night, it was anticipated that two senior international matches would be lined up for early to mid-May at Lansdowne Road, with the squad then heading for the Far East between 10 days and two weeks before the start of the competition. A further friendly game is possible after the Irish arrive at their chosen base.

FIFA will meet on November 28th to decide on the seedings for the draw, but FAI general secretary Brendan Menton feels that things may simply be done along geographical lines, with the draw being structured so as to leave each of the eight groups with, roughly speaking, two European sides as well as one from Asia/Africa and one from North/South America.

Holders France, as well as the two host nations, have already been allocated to their groups and know where all of their games will be staged.

The FAI will be entitled to somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 tickets for each game, with Menton estimating the figure to be 10 per cent of the seats in each of the venues. Priority will be given to members of existing FAI schemes such as the 10-year seat and block-booking arrangements.

"The reality is, though," says Menton, "that because of the distances involved and the nature of the place, we would expect that most of the people travelling out will be doing so on organised packages and will get their tickets as part of them.

"I'm sure there will be a lot of tickets secured from other sources too. I mean you only have to look at the Giants Stadium - where we got 7,000 tickets, but there were 45,000 Irish in the ground - to see how resourceful people are in these circumstances."

One obvious source is FIFA itself, which has been distributing tickets for the finals since early in the year. The current phase of that process involves applying for tickets for particular games and then waiting for a lottery to take place in January.

Tickets may also be applied for on the basis of venues or participating teams, although the Irish may find themselves at a disadvantage in the process which was worked on a first-come-first-served basis until yesterday by which time, of course, most other competing nations had already secured their places in the finals.

Those hoping to make the journey next summer should probably keep their fingers crossed that Ireland are initially drawn in South Korea rather Japan, as that country is likely to prove substantially less expensive than its neighbour.

Everything from accommodation and food and drink to transport is more reasonable in South Korea and, over the duration of a two or three-week stay, the difference would almost certainly be large.

In terms of getting around, there is not a huge amount of difference, with both countries boasting highly developed and comfortable transport systems. In South Korea, the maximum internal journey time would be around four and a half hours by train for the trip between Seoul and Busan. Flying between the two cities typically costs less than £50, though, and if you can't get on a plane then the cheapness of rail travel, not to mention taking a bus, should provide some consolation.

In Japan, where eight of the 10 venues are quite close to the capital, Tokyo looks to be a good base for travelling fans, the drawbacks being the expense of staying in the city as well as the much greater cost of travel in the country. One way or the other, a good travel agent is worth tracking down.

For those hoping to move between both host countries, there are complications arising out of poor relations between the two. That is amply reflected in the organisation of the tournament, which has generally resembled two entirely separate entities.

Even the order in which the names of the countries appeared on match tickets caused a major row, with Japan claiming first spot on the basis of "J" coming before "K" in the western alphabet. The Koreans won out, though, when they pointed out that the official title of the competition is in French, and so the names involved are in fact "Coree" and "Japon".

This has since been translated back for the purposes of English language literature, and so what we are left with is a competition called "The 2002 World Cup Korea/Japan".

In a bid to avoid further recriminations, FIFA has authorised a shorter version in which neither nation is mentioned.

In any case, travel between the two countries is expensive, money from one can be hard to exchange in the other, and there is little co-ordination with regard to things like communications - the rule for mobile phones, for instance, seems to be that if it works in one country, it won't work in the other.

South Korea, in fact, scarcely acknowledges the existence of Japan's role in these finals in its own promotional material.

In terms of the sports facilities themselves, however, this World Cup looks set to surpass anything that has preceded it, with both nations spending enormous amounts on brand new stadiums and the extensive refurbishment of existing facilities.

There will, for a start, be plenty of facilities for McCarthy and the rest of the Irish entourage to scout around in a couple of weeks, for the Japanese have designated 84 facilities as preparation camps and 40 as training grounds, while the figures in South Korea are 67 and 32 respectively.

Ten stadiums in each country will be used during the competition and some are amongst the most visually striking ever built. Venues for the showpiece games include Seoul's new World Cup stadium which, with a capacity of 64,000, is the largest stadium in Asia to be specifically built to stage football, while Yokohama's multi-purpose venue accommodates an extra 9,000 spectators. Other impressive facilities include Taegu in South Korea and the stunning Sapporo stadium in northern Japan. What some visitors may find strange in such modern facilities, however, is the presence of fences and trenches between spectators and pitches. These are normal features in local grounds and not specifically aimed at dealing with the problem of visiting hooligans.