Thanks and goodbye

AND SO Brian Kerr’s career as Irish manager has come to an end. There are those who might consider it “a result” but as Roy Keane might put it, no-one should be dancing and hugging in the streets.

The FAI are entitled to say they gave Kerr everything he needed in the job. But perhaps the one thing he needed more than anything else was time. And he wasn’t given enough of that.

If you subscribe to the basic concept that an international manager should be given two full terms in which to prove himself, then the FAI’s decision can best be described as well-intentioned, but premature.