FAI officials yesterday succeeded in achieving their three primary objectives during some difficult talks in Skopje to arrange the dates for qualifying games in Group Eight of the European Championships in 2000.

Before travelling to the Macedonian capital, they had identified their priorities as starting and finishing their programme with a home game and avoiding Yugoslavia and Croatia in back-to-back away games.

In the event, they managed all three in what amounted to a demanding test of negotiating skills for Bernard O'Byrne, the FAI's chief executive, and his team of assistants.

Ireland will open with a home game against Croatia on September 5th and will then face examinations of varying severity before playing FYR Macedonia at Lansdowne Road in their final qualifying game on October 10th next year.

And instead of the dreaded prospect of meeting Yugoslavia and Croatia within the space of four days in the mandatory segment of the programme, they will now play Croatia and Malta abroad in September 1999. It all required a lot of persuasive talking and a degree of compromise and even then, the meeting almost broke up in disagreement.

"At two different stages, the discussions became deadlocked and we thought we would have to refer the matter back to UEFA," said O'Byrne. "This, apparently, has already happened in two other groupings in the championship, but eventually common sense prevailed and we were able to reach a measure of agreement.

"On occasions such as these, you are never going to get all of what you want, but on balance, I think we did well. In the main, our programme is well-balanced and while the games still have to be won, it doesn't give us the additional problems we might have had."

Mick McCarthy, who learned of the draw arrangements at his home in London, said that the opening two games, against Croatia (home) and Yugoslavia (away), would provide a realistic guide to Ireland's chances of qualifying.

"One thing's for sure, we'll have a pretty good idea where we're going after these two matches," he said. "It's a tough start, but not as bad as it might have been had we been forced to play both of them on the same trip. The redeeming feature, of course, is that it makes for a marginally easier finishing schedule.

"The great fear among Irish supporters was that we would, in some way, be victims of a Balkan carve up. That, thankfully, hasn't happened. Overall, it's all nicely balanced and now it's up to us to go and do the business."

If there is a downside, it is the absence of any games in April and May of next year. Traditionally, this is one of the most important periods on the international calendar and has become synonymous with big games in Dublin.

On this occasion, however, there is a break in Ireland's programme between the game in FYR Macedonia on March 27th of next year and the June 5th meeting with Yugoslavia at Lansdowne Road. The latter fixture will worry McCarthy greatly for at that point, the club season in England will have been finished for almost a month .

There is, therefore, a risk of players going stale and, significantly, he moved to do away with a similar problem when the original fixture list for the current World Cup ordained that Ireland play Liechtenstein on June 10th last.

He was successful in persuading the Liechtenstein Federation to bring forward the game by three weeks but that, it seems, is not now an option. In those circumstances, he will almost certainly advise the FAI to arrange warmup games for both April and May.

Ominously, Ireland are back in Skopje on March 27th next year, almost two years to the day since falling to a 3-2 defeat in the same stadium, a result which weighed like a millstone in their attempt to qualify for a place in the World Cup finals in France this summer.

Inevitably, however, it is the meetings with Croatia and Yugoslavia, both currently embarked on their preparations for France '98, which will make or break Ireland's hopes of going to the European finals for the second time in their history.

The target of excavating four points from the two meetings with the Yugoslavs, is undoubtedly, made that much more difficult by that June game at Lansdowne Road. The visit to Croatia on September 4th, 1999, will represent the last big hurdle on the path to the finals and McCarthy's hope is that at that stage, his team will have generated an unstoppable momentum.

The format for the European Championships is precisely the same as that used for the current World Cup. Eight of the nine second-placed teams in the groups will meet in play-offs to fill the four places in the finals. The difference is that on this occasions, the two legs of the play-off ties, set for May 13th and 17th, will be separated by just four days.