 The group draw was originally scheduled to take place on 24 May 2003 in Wuhan, China, but was postponed prior to the relocation decision.It instead took place at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California on 17 July 2003, and included a formal handover ceremony for the FIFA Women's World Cup trophy, which was given to U.S. coach April Heinrichs by Chinese coach Ma Liangxing.FIFA also unveiled its Women's World Rankings system, which was used to determine seeded groups and retroactively calculated points for over 3,000 international fixtures dating back to 1971.