The draw for the Women’s World Cup takes place on Saturday morning in Auckland, New Zealand, and for the first time ever Ireland will be involved.
But what time is the draw, where can you watch it and what else do you need to know about next summer’s World Cup finals?
What time is the draw?
The draw takes place at 7.30pm local time (7.30am Saturday) Irish time at the Aotea Centre in Auckland.
Where can I watch the draw?
The draw will be streamed live on RTE2, as well as the FIFA+ streaming service.
What’s going to happen?
There are four pots, labelled one to four, with eight balls in each pot. Each ball contains the name of a country.
Separately, there are eighth pots representing the groups - labelled A to H. In each of those pots, there are four balls with the numbers one to four. These represent the position in each group.
Keeping up? It will begin with the drawing of a team from pot one and will end by drawing the last team from pot four.
Each team pot will be completely emptied before moving on to the next pot.
A ball from a team pot will be drawn, followed by a ball from one of the group pots, thus determining the position to which the respective team is allocated within the group.
Easy!
It’s all straightforward after that, isn’t it?
No! New Zealand and Australia have already been placed in Groups A and B respectively, with each assigned position one.
FIFA’s general principle is to ensure, where possible, that no group has more than one team from the same qualification zone/confederation drawn into it.
This is applicable to all zones except Europe, which will be represented by 11 teams (a Portugal win in next February’s play-offs would bring that total to 12).
So, each group will have at least one but no more than two European teams drawn into it.
How many teams from each confederation will take part in the World Cup?
We already know that Europe has 11 - and could possibly have 12. With 29 of the 32 qualified teams already known - and three more to come via the intercontinental play-offs next February - the tally so far is:
Hosts: 2 (Australia, New Zealand)
AFC: 5 (China, Japan, Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam)
CAF: 4 (Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia)
CONCACAF: 4 (Canada, Costa Rica, Jamaica, United States)
CONMEBOL: 3 (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia)
UEFA: 11 (Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland)
What about the seedings? Which countries are in Pots one to four?
Pot 1: New Zealand (hosts), Australia (hosts), United States, Sweden, Germany, England, France, Spain
Pot 2: Canada, Netherlands, Brazil, Japan, Norway, Italy, China PR, South Korea
Pot 3: Denmark, Switzerland, Republic of Ireland, Colombia, Argentina, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Jamaica
Pot 4: Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Morocco, Zambia, 3 Inter-confederation play-off winners
When does the actual World Cup take place?
The tournament will kick off next summer (or winter in the southern hemisphere) on July 20th and run through to the final on August 20th.
Where should we be looking to book our Airbnbs and hotels?
There are five host cities in Australia (Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney) and four in New Zealand (Auckland, Dunedin, Hamilton, Wellington). Unfortunately, there are no groups where there won't be a significant amount of travel between matches. Once the draw is made, however, we will know where the Girls in Green will be playing and when.
What about ticket sales?
FIFA are handling all ticket sales with single match pass sales beginning following Saturday’s draw, with another exclusive Visa ticket pre-sale period from 25 October before all fans will be able to secure tickets from 1 November 2022.
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