THE countdown to next August's World Cup qualifier in Zimbabwe begins this weekend for the Irish women's hockey team who play Italy in two friendly internationals at Belfield in Dublin.

The games form part of the visitors final preparations for October's World Cup preliminary tournament in Trinidad, where they will hope to earn the right to join Ireland in the African event but for the Irish squad they will" be the first stages of a lengthy build up programme.

"The real beginning to our build up will be after the interprovincials in November when the squad will be formed properly, so we're working on a build up of several months prior to the competition," says Irish manager Terry Gregg.

"These matches against Italy are not really part of that programme but, nevertheless, it's an important period for the players.

Since finishing eleventh in the last World Cup, which was staged, in Dublin two years ago, the Irish team has had mixed fortunes and Gregg is looking for greater consistency in the coming months.

I think we were at a peak for the World Cup and since then, although we expected to get better, we didn't, and that was because we couldn't repeat that same enormous commitment.

"The message to the players now is, if you re going to produce anything at all you're going to have to be at your very best to do so. We were disappointed with our eighth place finish in the European Cup last year, improved a lot when we drew with the United States and were bad again when we played Wales at the end of the season. Consistency is the essence of the plan," said Gregg.

While Gregg is hoping for two good displays at the weekend, against a nation Ireland have beaten in nine of their 10 meetings, he expects the Italians to be the sharper team.

"They are peaking for the World Cup preliminary tournament and have had a lot of matches recently so they are at a much higher state of preparation at the moment than we would be.

"We have been doing a lot of training but we want to be reaching peak fitness at the end of the club season rather than now, so in that respect it will be pretty even stuff," says Gregg of an Italian team that has already beaten an Ulster and Leinster President's XI on their four match tour.

An experienced 16 player Irish squad, with over 500 caps between them, has been named for the matches. Sarah Kelleher, unavailable due to business commitments, is the only notable absentee, and Kim Mills of Pegasus the sole newcomer.

Tomorrow's match will be Ireland's first since the offside rule was scrapped, a change designed to transfer the balance of power toward the attackers.