BLACKBURN Rovers midfielder Brett Emerton could find himself at the centre of a club versus country tug-of-war.

Australia's new head coach, Pim Verbeek, has indicated he wants to call up the former Feyenoord star for the Socceroos' opening World Cup qualifier with Qatar in Melbourne on February 6.

Although Australia's squad is likely to consist of mainly A-League based players, Verbeek has not ruled out using Emerton and other Premiership based Aussies, providing he can broker deals with their respective clubs.

The Qatar game falls on a FIFA date, which means European clubs do not have to release players until 48 hours before the fixture, so that would therefore exclude Emerton from travelling to the other side of the world.

However, Verbeek FROM BACK PAGE is considering asking Emerton to make himself available by skipping Rovers' Premier League fixture against Everton at Ewood on February 2.

Football Federation Australia's (FFA) head of high performance, John Boultbee, said: "Pim is on the phone to European-based players already to talk to them (about their plans).

"Some have indicated that they would try to work with their clubs to miss the league game before the February 6 match.

"That might be wishful thinking on the part of some of them.

"As they are only available 48 hours before the game, we would have to decide whether it was worthwhile anyway.

"It would be difficult unless there's an agreement with the clubs for them to miss the weekend before."

Rovers are already set to be without Aaron Mokoena in the early weeks of the new year, because the midfielder has been named in South Africa's squad for the African Cup of Nations, so to lose Emerton as well would be a further blow.

However, Hughes is hoping common sense will prevail in this instance because he believes the timing of Australia's qualifier would place unnecessary demands on Emerton's body.

"We've always supported all the guys on international dates. There's never a problem with us trying to pull people back," said Hughes.

"The only time we speak to associations regarding availability is when it's a concern to us that the players would suffer physically if they did go.

"That's the only time when we would question their availability."

Emerton also agrees the timing of the Qatar game is far from ideal, and he believes a more practical solution might be to include more Australian-based players for certain qualifiers.

"If I played at the weekend for my club and then had another game on the Wednesday with Australia, that's almost impossible," said the Rovers midfielder.

"I'd be arriving the day before the match and I don't think that would be smart anyway.

"Even if the Australian Federation wanted us to come back, I don't think our bodies would be in any shape to take part in the game, so it's probably best that we stay in Europe."

Included in the Asian section of the World Cup qualifying draw for the first time, Australia were drawn in group A, together with Qatar, China and Iraq, but some of their qualifying games will be played outside of the normal Fifa international calendar, which means Verbeek may have to cope without the likes of Emerton for certain fixtures.

The Rovers midfielder added: "The difficulty for us is that some of the games do not fall on Fifa dates so that makes it hard, both for us as a players and the clubs to release us.

"We might play for our clubs here on a Saturday and then have a game back in Australia on the Wednesday, and then a game again with our clubs on the following Saturday.

"That's almost an impossible scenario so we could find ourselves playing Australian-based players in a lot of our qualifiers.

"But, hopefully, we've got enough strength in depth to get us through."