Liam Mackey: Stephen Kenny determined Ireland won't travel anywhere with backs against the wall

8 July 2020; Republic of Ireland manager Stephen Kenny during a press conference at FAI Headquarters in Abbotstown, Dublin. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

Apart maybe from the emergency task facing those gaffers, invariably specialists in the trade, who are parachuted in at close to the 11th hour to try and save a club from relegation, it’s hard to think of a more pressing, onerous and high stakes challenge in football than the one with which confronts Stephen Kenny in his first outing as a senior international manager.

For a start, he has taken up the role in what are, to put it at its mildest, disconcerting times of an unprecedented kind, something which was again brought home this week when we in the media had our first face to face — or, at least, partial face to face — encounter with the new Ireland manager.