As it happened: Euro 2012 play-off draw

It’s 12pm. You know what that means, don’t you? It’s time for the gods of the draw to determine our Euro 2012 fate.

Don’t dare move.

So, we all know the deal at this stage, right?

Ireland are one of four seeded teams in this morning’s draw, along with Croatia, Portugal and the Czech Republic.

Over on the other side of the draw, our potential opponents are Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Estonia.

The games are two-legged and will be played on 11/12 November and 15 November.

There was a bit of confusion earlier in the week as to whether or not Ireland’s seeding guaranteed them home advantage for the second leg. Once again, I can confirm that it does not. There’ll be a draw for that as well.

Apparently, according to smiling UEFA man, we have a “little problem.” That problem is that there are eight teams left, but only four qualification spots.

That’s a dilly of a pickle alright.

UEFA general sec  Gianni Infantino (what a name) has explained the procedure. Here come the balls.

Ready?

Turkey are first out. They play Croatia.

Estonia are next out of the hat. This is the one we want. I think?

And it is. IRELAND PLAY ESTONIA IN THE EURO 2012 PLAY-OFFS.

First leg will be in Estonia on 11/12 November. Second leg in Dublin

Czech Republic are next. They’ll play Montenegro.

And finally… Bosnia v Portugal.

So there you have it. Lucky, lucky Trapattoni.

Here’s the draw in full again:

• Turkey v Croatia
• Estonia v Ireland
• Czech Rep v Montenegro
• Bosnia v Portugal

We appear to be having some technical difficulties at the moment, but hopefully you can all still see this. If not, my apologies (but that’s hardly much use either because you won’t be able to see it).

Know nothing about Estonia? Here’s what Paul had to say about them yesterday

Estonia are a side that Ireland would not exactly fear, given that they have defeated them on several previous occasions. And their first Group C game was a decidedly unimpressive 2-1 home win over Brian Kerr’s Faroe Islands, with two last-minute injury time goals needed to secure victory.

More tellingly still, they suffered an embarrassing 2-0 loss to Kerr’s team in the corresponding away fixture. However, back-to-back victories over Northern Ireland in their final two games indicates that they improved as the campaign wore on.

I’ve just checked with him and he says that all of the above still applies.

Yesterday, 68% of you said that Estonia was your dream draw. You all still feel that way, right?

Let’s be a little bit serious here for a moment. This Estonian side are no mugs. So far in this campaign, they beat Serbia and Slovenia on the road. That’s got to count for something.

Time for a quick snapshot of the fans’ reaction. Here’s what you lot have been saying over on Facebook.

Who’s surprised? Hands up please.

There’s a prize for anyone who can tell me when the last time we played Estonia was. Anybody? Bueller?

You may remember that they were in our qualification group for the 2002 World Cup. On that occasion, we won 2-0 home and away with Richard Dunne scoring on both occasions.

That was 10 years ago, however. I’ll take a 1-0 aggregate win this time around if that’s ok.

Martina Ni Githan has definitely got the right attitude. She has been in touch with this comment: ”Hopefully Ireland don’t get above their station and think Estonia will be a walk over. Keep your feet on the ground lads!”

Sound, sound advice. Nothing is won yet, though you have to feel that Trap’s contract will only be renewed if we managed to get to next summer’s finals.

The FAI have confirmed that the first leg of Ireland’s play-off will be in Tallinn on the Friday evening, 11 November.

We’ll leave it there for now. After all, we’ve got almost a full month to go before the game itself. That should give us plenty of time to analyse all the different combinations and permutations.

Thanks for dropping by.