KEY POINTS:
The opening game at the 2010 World Cup is 1096 days away but the first steps towards finding the 32 teams to play at the finals of the world's biggest football festival were taken at a small ceremony in Auckland yesterday.
Under the watchful eye of Samoa's favourite footballing son, Socceroo Tim Cahill, the draw for this year's South Pacific Games was made.
The August 24-September 8 XIIIth South Pacific Games in Apia will be the first of many global tournaments and play-offs which will whittle the record 205 hopefuls down to the final line-up for the World Cup, kicking off on June 11, 2010.
Cahill played for Samoa in his schoolboy days but later broke new ground when he was allowed to switch countries and play for Australia - where he was born. He played at last year's World Cup, where he was the first Australian to score a goal at a finals tournament.
He took special interest in yesterday's draw as his brother Chris captains the Samoan national team.
The draw, with the 10 teams entered in the football tournament at the Games seeded in line with latest Fifa rankings, made for some interesting match-ups. Perennial rivals Solomon Islands (ranked 161 on the latest list) and Vanuatu (168) were drawn to play each other in group B, with Samoa (189), Tonga (190) and American Samoa (199).
Group A is headed by Fiji (153) and Tahiti (173).
The top three teams from the tournament will then join New Zealand - seeded through to stage two of the Oceania Football Confederation World Cup qualifiers - in a six-day home and away play-off series starting on October 13 this year and ending on September 10 next year.
The winner of that play-off will play the fifth-placed Asian team home and away for the 32nd spot at the World Cup finals.
In a second draw yesterday, also for matches to be played at the South Pacific Games, teams chasing a place in the women's tournament at next year's Beijing Olympics went into the hat.
The two groups are headed by Tonga (55th on Fifa rankings) and Papua New Guinea (59).
The winner of the Pacific Games will then play New Zealand home and away on dates yet to be decided with the winner qualifying directly for the Olympics.
