MICK McCARTHY was granted the fixture, if not the opposition, he wanted for his World Cup preparations when Wales yesterday agreed to meet the Republic of Ireland at the Arms Park in Cardiff on February 11th.

It came at the end of a long train of frustration for FAI officials who had been in contact with 10 national federations in their efforts to arrange a warm up game for the World Cup expedition to Macedonia on April 2nd.

Eventually, with time running out and the options dwindling, they turned to Wales, a development which will not have surprised anybody with an eye on history.

The countries have met six times in the last 15 years in either February or March, a stage of the season when it is particularly difficult to line up attractive opposition for non-competitive games.

It so irritated Jack Charlton that, after the last meeting at Lansdowne Road in 1993, he announced that he wanted to see the back of a fixture which had given him more grief than gratification.

It is a measure of McCarthy's desperation to break a five month void in his programme that he is still able to drum up enthusiasm for a game which is unlikely to tax the seating capacity of the Arms Park.

"The important thing is that it gives us a chance of bringing the players together and concentrating minds for those tough games in Macedonia and Romania in April," he said.

"At the last resort, I would have assembled the players in England for a three day talk in, but that is no substitute for actual match practice.

"Wales may have had their problems of late, but, speaking from experience, I can assure you that they are never an easy team to beat. And the fact that the game is in the Arms Park will give it a little extra spice."

This, in fact, will be the first occasion for Ireland to play in Cardiff. On their two previous visits to the Principality, they lost 2-1 at Swansea in 1979 and won 3-0 on a veritable ice rink at Wrexham six years ago.

McCarthy's statement that the Welsh invariably provide abrasive opposition for their Celtic cousins is rooted in painful fact. Wales won the first four games in a series stretching back to 1960, and it was not until the match at Lansdowne Road in 1990, when Bernie Slaven scored on his international debut, that Ireland broke the sequence.

Since then, however, the fortunes of the two countries have deviated sharply, for while Ireland went on to play in two World Cup finals, Welsh performances seldom matched the sum of their component parts.

Nor has this season produced any significant improvement. After scoring 11 times without reply in two games against San Marino, their World Cup challenge was derailed when they lost 3-1 at home to Holland and then suffered an embarrassing 7-1 defeat in the return game at Eindhoven.

Last Saturday's drab, scoreless draw with Turkey offered no immediate hope of renaissance. But no less than his Irish counterpart, the Welsh manager, Bobby Gould, believes the upcoming Cardiff assignment can be beneficial for his side.

Because of England's World Cup appointment with Italy at Wembley on February 12th, it is a closed date in the Premiership and that should guarantee the presence of most of the established players in both squads.

Those on the fringe of the senior squad will get their chance in March, however, when Ireland's "B" team meet a National League selection at a Dublin venue

The game is scheduled to be played "on or around" St Patrick's Day and is likely to feature players of the calibre of Mark Kennedy, Dave Savage, Jon Goodman and Mark Kinsella in McCarthy's shadow team.

. Tony Cascarino scored a superb hat trick to earn struggling Nancy a 3-1 away win against Le Havre in the French first division last night.