Rustenburg home on the cards for Black Stars

Ghana could be returning to a familiar surroundings in Rustenburg for their group campaign at the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations in South Africa.

Nelspruit, Rustenburg, Port Elizabeth, Durban and Johannesburg are the host cities for the Cup of Nations.

The Black Stars and Ivory Coast are vying for either Rustenburg or Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape Province when the draw is made on Wednesday in Durban.

Ghana, were based in Rustenburg for a greater part of their 2010 World Cup stay in South Africa.

Johannesburg's FNB Stadium, formerly known as Soccer City and the venue for the World Cup final, will host only the opening match and the final.

The Nations Cup draw would decide whether Ghana and Ivory Coast are placed in either Group B or D.

The Black Stars are one the four top-seeded teams for next year's finals alongside hosts South Africa who are in Group A and will be based in Durban, title holder Zambia in Group C in Nelspruit and Ivory Coast.

According to Caf, with the "exception of the host country (South Africa) and holder of the trophy (Zambia), the 14 qualified teams will be ranked based on their performances during the last three Orange Africa Cup of Nations, i.e. the 2008, 2010 and 2012 editions."

1. In conformity with the regulations of the competition, South Africa the host team shall be the top seeded team of group A and Zambia the title holder will be the top seeded team of group C.

2. South Africa and Zambia will respectively have letters A1 and C1 on the board.

3. According to their ranking in the last three editions, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire are the teams in Pot 1 and will be the top seeded teams of groups B and D.

Stage 1 of the Draw will be to do an integral draw to determine which of these two teams shall be awarded the letter B1 and which one will have the letter D1.

4. The remaining twelve teams will be categorized into three Pots (Pot 2, 3 and 4) based on their results in the last three editions of the AFCON in 2008, 2010 and 2012.

5. The Stage 2 of the Draw will be to proceed to the repartition of the 4 teams of Pot 4 (DR Congo, Togo ,Cape Verde and Ethiopia) in the four groups.

6. For this stage 2, we will seek the assistance of a designated representative at the Official Draw for the following steps.

The representative shall draw from the first jar that contains the 4 groups (AB-C-D) the letter that will determine the group where the next drawn team will play .

The first team to be drawn shall belong in that group in position 4 (i.e. A4, B4, C4 or D4). The same procedure will be repeated for the three other teams of Pot 4 .

7. The same procedure as described in point 6 above will be applied for Stage 3 of the Draw concerning 4 teams in Pot 3 (Algeria, Burkina Faso, Morocco and Niger).

The first team to be drawn shall belong in that group in position 3 (i.e. A3, B3, C3 or D3).

8. The same procedure as described in point 6 above will be applied for Stage 4 of the Draw concerning 4 teams in Pot 2(Mali, Tunisia, Angola and Nigeria).

The first team to be drawn shall belong in that group in position 2 (i.e. A2, B2, C2 or D2).

By the end of these 4 stages the sixteen qualified countries would then, be distributed within the four groups.

Teams in the same pot cannot be drawn against each other.

The tournament takes place in South Africa between 19 January and 10 February 2013.

Seedings:

Pot one: South Africa, Zambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast

Pot two: Mali, Tunisia, Angola, Nigeria

Pot three: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Morocco, Niger

Pot four: Togo, Cape Verde, DR Congo, Ethiopia.