Ireland's 25-man squad for winter training in the build-up to the ICC Qualifying Tournament in Canada next July will be chosen on Friday. Ken Rutherford - who is chairman of selectors as well as national coach - says he and his colleagues know the type of players they want.

Each of those chosen will be given individual training programmes and there will be a series of fitness tests throughout the winter, before net practice resumes at Queen's University Belfast next February.

Next month Rutherford returns to South Africa via his native New Zealand and will be back in Belfast for a few weeks in March "to make sure that the nets have kicked off in good style". Rutherford says there is no point in his being in Ireland over the winter. "I don't know what Mike Hendrick did, because the facilities are simply not here for a decent winter training programme, and if I did stay on, it would be a mere PR exercise," he says.

Rutherford pays due credit to the clubs, which, he acknowledges, provide family and social as well as playing facilities.

But, he says, "the standard of club cricket around the island is a bit of a joke, really, and when the guys who aspire to play international cricket go back to their clubs whatever good habits they have picked up quickly vanish. "You simply can't have top club league cricket when one team scores 32 and another 22, like happened last Saturday." He says that he has been disappointed by "the lack of basic skills" among even our better players.

"It's a question of back to square one to see how we can improve things at the bottom level. But I always knew the first year was going to be a fact-finding exercise, sorting out the players who I believe might just make it as international cricketers.

"But people who think that Ireland is very close to one-day international standard are living in a fantasy world," says Rutherford. "We can't play anyone and feel overly confident about beating them, and that's a fact. It's up to the players and the administrators to get that right and my role in the next 10 months is to make sure we get to Toronto in a good positive frame of mind and realistic about our chances." The Irish Cricket Union (ICU) has been working on a strategic development plan, and Rutherford sees this as vital, while he also advocates the introduction of a national club league, with an elite first division, to improve playing standards.

"There are lots of band-aids being thrown around Irish cricket, bits of plaster being used to fix certain areas.

"But so far nobody is putting a whole new operation in place. Hopefully, maybe we'll get some uniformity in time, the catalyst being the ICU development plan. But until that happens I think Irish cricket will just keep going round in circles. That's just my opinion, and I might be wrong," he says.

Rutherford believes that Irish cricket can learn from the Scots, who have had a national league with several divisions in place for the past few years, and an academy. Jim Love, his Scottish counterpart, can pick two or three meaningful matches to watch at a weekend.

"I can watch Merrion play Phoenix, say, two of the stronger clubs in Dublin, but apart from Dominic and Gus Joyce, they're all bloody Australians, it's just ridiculous and the Leinster Cricket Union (LCU) must decide what to do about it.

He welcomes the proposed three-match North v South pre-Toronto series because, he says, a system of "strength versus strength" is essential, "matches with a hard competitive edge and a bit of aggression.