Apparently they were hoping to avoid teams from the Middle East!!
Their record in that part of the world isn’t great, since joining Asia.
In fact looking at those teams, there is some bad taste joke in there, maybe with a reference to the Lowry’s and their faith or similar.
Should still be too good for Jordan and Palestine. Syria of course so nearly knocked them out, re World Cup qualifying.
Top 2 each pool to Round of 16, plus best four 3rd placed teams.
Wouldn’t it be great for AWs to be playing in this. I reckon at full strength we’d be better than at least half of these 24 teams, despite what rankings say.