Republic of Ireland Under-21 head coach Noel King is in Switzerland, waiting to learn his squad's fate for the next two years as the draw will be made for the UEFA Under-21 Championships 2017 qualifying round draw on Thursday.
The nine groups for the qualifying campaign will be drawn at 8.00am with the fixtures due to be confirmed later in the day.
Ireland’s first game in the competition is due to take place at the end of next month.
King's side are in Pot D, which is the fourth tier of six, alongside Finland, Wales, Hungary, Iceland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova and Belarus so they will not face any of those sides.
Despite such a low seeding, King is not worried overly concerned about the possible permutations of the draw. “I don’t think you can work out a best case or worst case scenario, you just have to take what you can get,” he said.
"You may fancy facing somebody or want to avoid somebody else but you can’t control that so it’s not worth worrying about.
"This draw tomorrow sorts out our calendar for the 24 months and that’s exciting in itself. There’s ten dates available and sometimes there’ll be double-headers depending on the competition and seeding."
A lot of that will be down to negotiations. Hopefully we can get a good outcome in the fixtures meeting after the draw is known."
Twelve nations will qualify for the finals in Poland 2017 including the hosts so the nine group winners will qualify automatically while the four runners-up with the best records against the teams first, third, fourth and fifth in their group will go into the play-offs and be drawn into two ties to decide the last two qualifiers for the finals.
King is heading into the new campaign full of optimism. Ireland has never qualified for the UEFA Under-21 Championships so the minor expansion of the competition can only be welcomed.
"There’s a few more positions up for grabs with an extra four places so at least there is an increased opportunity for all of the countries," he said King.
"You never know what age-group a country will be particularly strong in. We’ve been working with the players who are eligible for this age-group for the past couple of months and there will be another year’s batch to join them coming up shortly."
