This Friday night sees the opening phase of the 2025 Asian Cup take place. A dinner will be held at Chachii – the café/restaurant attached to our venue at Ultra Football – Unit 8, Graphix Row, 140 Bourke Rd, Alexandria – starting at 7PM. During the dinner, the official draw for the tournament will take place. A number of the events over the weekend need to be drawn, each one presenting its own intricate requirements. Below is a rundown of all the ins and outs of each particular draw.

For every event, as per FISTF regulations, players/teams seeded in POT A are automatically assigned to each group, in ranking order. Players/teams ranked in POT B are then drawn randomly, one in each group. Finally, all other players/teams are assigned to POT C and are evenly distributed across the groups.

To see the names of all the seeded players/teams in each Event, click on this link.

JUNIOR EVENT
There are 9 players in the Junior Event.

POT A
1. Tim Phokos (The Tumbleweeds)
2. Zakkhya Quinn (The Tumbleweeds)
3. Josiah Jackson (The Tumbleweeds)

The remaining players do not have any ranking data. In order to limit the number of players from one club in each group, as per FISTF regulations, the remaining three Tumbleweeds players will be POT B and the three Sydney TFC players will be POT C. One player from each of POT B and POT C will be randomly drawn into each group.

WOMEN’S EVENT
There are 5 players in the Women’s Event, who need to be placed in a FISTF assigned order. The top ranked player is Beth Eveleigh (Northern Phoenix TFC) who will be player No.1 in the group. The second ranked player is Miaki Nishi (Yokohama OSC) who will be player No.2 in the group. The remaining 3 places will be determined by random draw.

OPEN EVENT
This where things get complex! A number of FISTF and other regulations need to be factored in:
a) (FISTF) Where possible, no players from the same club should be in the same group.
b) (FISTF) Where possible, no players from the same foreign country (and, in the case of Australia, by special FISTF decree) or same non-home state should be in the same group. To accommodate this, no more than two players from NSW/ACT will be drawn into any one group.
c) (CASTFA) In order to allow Women’s and Junior players to compete in both their respective Events AND the Open Event, due to conflicting match scheduling, all Open Event players also competing in either the Women’s or Junior Events must be drawn into Groups 8-14 of the Open Event. No two Women’s Event players can be in the same Open Event group, and no two Junior Event players can be drawn into the same Open Event group.

With the above caveats overriding the random aspects of the draw, the following procedure will take place:

POT A
The top 14 ranked players will automatically be placed in Groups 1-14, in ranking order.

POT B
The players ranked 15-28 will be randomly drawn into Groups 1-14, one player per group.

POT C
The players ranked 29-56 will be randomly drawn into Groups 1-14, two players per group.

CLUB TEAMS EVENT
As per FISTF regulations,
a) Where possible, no teams from the same club should be in the same group.
b) Where possible, no teams from the same foreign country (and, in the case of Australia, by special FISTF decree) or same non-home state should be in the same group.

POT A
The top 3 ranked teams will automatically be placed in Groups 1-3, in ranking order.

POT B
The teams ranked 4-6 will be randomly drawn into Groups 1-3, one team per group.

POT C
The teams ranked 7-10 will be randomly drawn into Groups 1-3, so that Groups 1&2 contain 3 teams and Group 3 contains 4 teams.