The Irish and British champions meet on the Jim Clark Memorial Rally starting tomorrow afternoon and Donnelly will be downcast to see so few of his regular rivals from the Tarmac championship are joining him on the Scottish round of the series.

Higgins, on the other hand, will be delighted.

The Welsh-based Manxman is attempting to win the Tarmac title for the first time and, at the same time, retain his British crown.

The trouble is the two championships have slightly different rules and this weekend Higgins must switch from the WRC Subaru S11 in which he won the UAC Easter International to a less powerful N12 production Impreza.

It means an outright Scottish victory is all but impossible but the closer to the front he can finish the more Tarmac points he will collect in his bid to remain ahead of reigning champion Donnelly.

The Maghera driver will be favourite to win the rally in his S12 Subaru but he had hoped many of the Tarmac regulars with their big WRC supercars would be there to push Higgins as far down the finishing order as possible.

But several potential front runners have chosen to opt out of the Clark Rally, some of them unhappy with the decision to extend the event into Sunday and the probability of having to take an extra day off work.

The list of drivers who might have been there to keep Higgins at bay includes Kris Meeke, Andreas Mikkelsen, Kevin Lynch, Peadar Hurson, Stephen Murphy, any of the three MacHales and last year's winner Derek McGarrity.

Eamonn Boland, Tim McNulty and Donnelly's Reid Transport team-mate Gareth Jones are expected to be the only top Tarmac contenders to take the starter's flag in Kelso tomorrow afternoon.

"It's disappointing," said Donnelly who trails Higgins by 14 points, mostly as a result of his accident on the penultimate stage of the Galway International while leading Higgins and double World champion Marcus Gronholm.

"This is a very good rally and, after the great entry and the great battle we all had on the Rally of the Lakes a few weeks ago, I was looking forward to another one. Still, there is a job to be done and we have to get on with it."

But even Higgins isn't entirely happy. The complicated rules of these rallies which feature in both championships mean that only drivers registered for the Tarmac series can enter in WRC cars.

So people like Scottish champion Barry Johnson, Steve Petch and Jon Ingram has signed up.

" This is a big problem for us and our championship plans," says Higgins.

"It seems unfair that people have to register to take points off everyone else if they are only doing it to be able to compete on one or two events."

Meanwhile, Higgins could have problems on the British championship front, too.

He and his Irish co-driver Rory Kennedy were well beaten on the opening round of the British series, the Pirelli International, by Guy Wilks, the Suzuki Junior World championship star who had been recruited by Mitsubishi to drive their lead Lancer.

Another win for Wilks would put Higgins under severe pressure as he battles to retain a title he has already won three times. Co-driver Kennedy admits they could "fall between two stools" if they aren't careful.

"After the Clark Rally we may have to re-assess the situation and decide whether chasing two championships with different rules is a good idea," he said.

Higgins' opposition in Scotland also includes Phillip Morrow, the young Lisburn driver who led the production section of the Clark Rally two years ago until the final moments when his Mitsubishi was damaged.

Morrow has already won twice at national level this season and was leading again in the Isle of Man a fortnight ago until a tyre blow-out cost him many places.

The extra day added to the Clark Rally has forced the withdrawal of another top Ulster production driver Seamus Leonard.

"I didn't realise it had been extended and had always planned to dash back on Saturday night and do the Cavan Rally on Sunday," he said. " I'll just go to Cavan now."