Ireland are considering offering key players semi-professional contracts as they gear up for a key 15 months which culminates in the 2007 World Cup.

Ireland, who will play in the C&G Trophy, meet nine county sides between April 23 and June 25 and also play a full ODI against England at Belfast on June 13. To prepare for that, Ireland will tour Africa where they will meet Kenya and Namibia.

"There's no way the players can continue to be total amateurs when every game they play will be against a totally professional team," Adrian Birrell, the coach, told the Irish Examiner. "There's going to have to be some movement. We'll never be able to afford to contract 15 players but we might be able compensate players in some way for their time and their commitment and that's going to be massive in the next few years."

The African tour and the subsequent matches in England will mean that some players will need to be away from work for more than three months, and that is bound to cause problems. "The demands I'm going to have to make on the players will be massive," Birrell admitted. "They'll have to be fully professional three months before the World Cup.

"We've got the nucleus of a team which, I believe, can take us further forward in world cricket. We've risen from eighth in the Associates rankings to first this year. That's where we are, that's where we're seeded. We'll be competing against nine English counties next year and it's always been my contention that we need to be competing against the professional teams in order to progress."