FAI officials will be hoping to avoid playing important games out of season when they attend a World Cup fixtures meeting in Liechtenstein this morning.

Representatives of Romania, Lithuania, Iceland, Macedonia, Malta and Ireland will attend the talks in Vaduz, designed to agree, dates and venues for games in Group Six of the World Cup qualifiers.

While these meetings are an exercise in compromise, Louis Kilcoyne, who leads the Irish delegation, is hopeful that they will succeed in what he believes are the key issues.

"From our point of view, the important things are to arrange a relatively easy start to our programme and to, avoid having to play key games in mid June," he said. "Jack Charlton taught us the value of banking points early and the beneficial effects to be had from winning two or three games at the top of your programme.

"It's also important to avoid, in as far as it's is possible, the dangers of playing big games in mid June. The, club season in Britain gets longer and more difficult by the year and, clearly, players are not in a position to given of their best in the summer.

"That will be our aim going into the meeting, but, as usual, there will be a big element of give and take. And if we end up with 80 per cent of what we want, we'll be quite happy."

It could prove an unusually difficult meeting in so far as most of the countries will have precious little room for manoeuvre. Climatic conditions mean that countries like and Lithuania can only at specific times and in the case of Ireland, Lansdowne Road is not available to the FAI between the last weeks of November and March.

From an Irish perspective, the key fixtures are those involving the top seeded country, Romania. To that extent, the priority is to arrange the home game for the most advantageous stage of the, season. Experience has taught us that that is in October or November.

Originally, a five man Irish delegation was scheduled to attend the talks, but after the winding up order issued against Cork City yesterday, it was deemed prudent for Joe Delaney and Sean Connolly to remain in Dublin.

It is understood however that Delaney and Connolly will link up with Kilcoyne, Michael Hyland and Des Casey in London tomorrow when interviews are scheduled to start for the vacant Republic of Ireland managerial post

The first two of these will involve Joe Kinnear and Mick McCarthy, to be followed by meetings with Kenny Dalglish and Dave Bassett. Sources in Blackburn yesterday said that the Dalglish interview has been scheduled for Friday, but whether the Scot will show is still, it seems, a moot point.

Dalglish, currently employed as director of football at Blackburn Rovers, is thought to have indicated some time ago that he was not prepared to enter into open, competition for the job and there is no suggestion that he has since changed his mind.

Almost certainly, he is the preferred choice of most of the FAI power brokers who see a team of Dalglish and, possibly, Ronnie Whelan as the ideal partnership, to take Ireland into the next World Cup campaign.

Only in the event of Dalglish opting out would Mick McCarthy emerge as favourite, in a partnership which could include Chris Hughton, who is currently assisting Gerry Francis at Tottenham.

David O'Leary, who has not been involved in football since announcing his retirement as a player with Leeds United, has also been mentioned as a possible number two, although at this point it is still not clear how he could be accommodated.