Having already had to change his travel plans once in the wake of Iran's defeat by Bahrain on Sunday, Mick McCarthy had to wait until last night for FIFA to confirm that it is Tehran he will be heading to tomorrow in order to see the first of the Asian Confederation's World Cup play-off games.

Originally, McCarthy and Ian Evans were booked to go to Riyadh where Saudi Arabia would have been playing the United Arab Emirates on Thursday had it not been for the failure of Iran to win in Manama.

And it was the Iranians who again threw his travel plans into doubt yesterday when the country's football association launched a fairly desperate bid to have Bahrain thrown out of the competition for fielding ineligible players in a number of the their second round games.

By last night, though, FIFA had made it clear that no breach of the rules had taken place and, more embarrassingly for the Iranians, the organisation claimed part of the Iranian action had been based on a case of mistaken identity.

Had the appeal been successful and Bahrain's results been declared null and void, then the effect would have been to elevate Iran, who had taken just one point from their two games with Bahrain, to the top of Group A and send them to next summer's World Cup automatically.

That would have represented a major boost to the FAI whose general secretary had repeatedly expressed a preference for flying to Saudi Arabia rather than Afghanistan's neighbour for November 15th play-off second leg.

Yesterday, he insisted that no matter what happened the association "would be guided by FIFA" in the matter, but everybody at Merrion Square will have been privately disappointed by the ruling that the Iranians must settle for second place in their group and a place in the Asian play-offs.

Their appeal was based on the claim that Bahrain had fielded three players who should have been suspended for the games immediately after they had received their second yellow cards of the country's qualification campaign.

The difficulty was that in each case the first booking had taken place during the first phase of qualifying, when Bahrain won a four-team group - that also included Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan and Singapore - to qualify for the more recent second group stages.

In fact, it is normal for single yellow cards not to carry over from one phase of the qualifying tournament. The FAI, for instance, was informed prior to the Cyprus game that any player with one yellow card after that game would not carry it into the play-off matches and FIFA made it clear last night that a similar ruling had been made in this case.

"FIFA General Secretary Michel Zen-Ruffinen pointed out to the Iranian Football federation that all players in question had been eligible, either because - in accordance with the disciplinary regulations and decisions by the FIFA disciplinary committee their previous yellow cards from the Asian first-round qualifying matches had not been carried over to the second round, or because the player had served his suspension," said a FIFA statement last night.

The ruling is an embarrassment for the Iranians who have already been hit by rumours in Tehran that Sunday's game had been fixed for political reasons.

Brian Kerr, meanwhile, has named a 21-man squad for next month's European Youth Championship qualifying mini-tournament in Cork. Included in his panel for the first time is Cork City's teenage striker Colin Patrick O'Brien who has made a huge impact with Liam Murphy's side since making his debut for the Eircom League side last month.

Glenn Lacey of Sunderland is also drafted into the panel which includes 12 of the squad that travelled to Israel with the under-16s last year.

The Irish Soccer Referees' Society has called for urgent talks with Roy Dooney and Brendan Menton in the wake of the recent accusation by Shelbourne manager Dermot Keely that there is corruption in the league.

IRELAND SQUAD: Wayne Henderson (Aston Villa), Brian Murphy (Manchester City), Mark Rossiter (Sunderland), Paddy McCarthy (Manchester City), Seβn Dillon (Aston Villa), Stephen Capper (Sunderland), Stephen Paisley (Manchester City), Glen Whelan (Manchester City), Ian Simpemba (Wycombe Wanderers), Stephen Brennan (Newcastle United), Keith Gilroy (Middlesbrough), Graham Ward (Wolves), Seβn Thorntan (Tranmere), Michael Foley (Liverpool), Daryl McMahon (West Ham), Liam Kearney (Nottingham Forest), Glenn Lacey (Sunderland), Jonathon Daly (Stockport County), Colin O'Brien (Cork City), George Snee (Totenham Hotspur), Adrian Deane (Charlton).