The Official Draw for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup takes place in Auckland, New Zealand on Saturday morning with the Republic of Ireland set to discover their opponents.
Manager Vera Pauw will be present at the Draw, where her team is placed in Pot 3 having qualified for the tournament for the first time following a Qualifying Play-Off victory over Scotland last week.
The tournament, which will be staged by Australia and New Zealand, will kick off next summer on July 20th and run through to the final on August 20th.
The draw will take place at 07:30 Irish Time and will be televised live on RTÉ2.
Each group will have at least one but no more than two teams from Europe, which may lead to a bit of computer shuffling during the live show but that will not lessen the excitement of being there on the biggest stage of them all.
Here are the allocation of teams into each of the pots.
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 plus three qualifiers from the inter-confederation Cup Qualification tournament to take place in January.
Depending on the draw Ireland could end up playing in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Auckland, Dunedin, Hamilton or Wellington, presenting different logistics challenges for both the FAI and the fans, but for the first time ever that is a first world problem that we can enjoy.
