New Ireland on march
Smart, highly-skilled and confident, the Nottingham Forest youngster has the potential to join the gifted Damien Duff and Robbie Keane in the forefront of an assault on a qualifying campaign for the 2006 finals in Germany that is certain to be hugely competitive and extremely difficult.
The competition from Cyprus, France, Switzerland, Israel and Faroe Islands represents only one element of a campaign that promises to have a pivotal effect on several aspects of Irish football as we know it.
For this World Cup competition will be a test of much more than the team and the quality of players available to Ireland.
There were symbols aplenty redolent of this new beginning in evidence in the little committee room under the stand at Lansdowne Road where Kerr had his final pre-match conference with Reid by his side.
Laid out on the table were samples of the new players’ uniforms and merchandise bearing the new FAI logo. This was the physical evidence of the new approach, the new emphasis upon marketing the game that is one of the cornerstones of the new FAI.
A new association is what we have now, and no mistake. The two years that have flown by since the World Cup finals in the Far East have seen enormous change within the walls of the Merrion Square headquarters.
The organisation is led by an entirely new team of administrators and this campaign will help show whether they have the capacity to exploit the progress of the team and fast-forward the development of the game here.
Their task is to tap into the enduring interest of Ireland’s youngsters and to encourage it further by raising the profile of the game and to extend it by attracting more support from the corporate and economic sectors to produce precious new sources of useful income.
Perhaps, most interesting of all, this new campaign is a trial of Brian Kerr and of the National League. For Kerr’s appointment 18 months ago represented a watershed in the evolution of Irish football.
He followed Mick McCarthy, Jack Charlton, Eoin Hand, John Giles, Liam Tuohy and Mick Meagan into the job.
Tuohy’s tenure was too brief - unfortunately - to be very instructive and the others were all of a likeness. They were international players of some substance with considerable experience of English League football, as players and managers.
Kerr is the product of an entirely different football academy.
He spent his entire football career, as player and manager, in this country. He played to intermediate level, gained a measure of international experience as assistant to Tuohy and spent his time in sole control with Ireland’s under-age teams and with St. Patrick’s Athletic.
With Ireland’s youngsters Kerr enjoyed huge success on the international stage. He presided over a golden era with St. Patrick’s Athletic and his appointment to the top job with Ireland was a natural progression.
He has met every challenge presented to him but this represents the ultimate test. After 18 months of trial and error and a precious nine consecutive friendly matches this summer, he will send out a team against Cyprus for the first time in competition that has been drawn in his image.
This then is a big day for Kerr and, in typically open and unaffected fashion, he spoke of his first experience of managing an international under-age team.
“I was proud of that appointment and excited at the potential of the team. Every match since then I have felt excited about it.
“I always wake up on the morning of the match feeling excited about it and always a little bit tense and that’s what I feel now about tomorrow’s game.”
You need listen to Kerr for only five minutes to appreciate that this is a different person to your average international team manager.
True, he is just as secretive about his team selections, formations and planned tactics as the most paranoid on the circuit. But he treats international press conferences with the same laid-back casualness, the same lack of formality, as he did press interviews at Richmond Park not so long ago.
His team will probably include three players starting a competitive international match for the first time - Newcastle’s Andy O’Brien at centre-back, Andy Reid and Graham Kavanagh (Cardiff City) in midfield.
He knows that Ireland must beat Cyprus if they are to travel to Switzerland for next week’s contest with hopes of qualifying for Germany enhanced. Ireland beat Cyprus 4-0 twice in the qualifying tournament for the 2002 World Cup and they will be expected to do so again.
The certainty that Cyprus will be better prepared this time means that Ireland will probably find goals more difficult to come by. Which suggests Kerr will need all of his creative players now there is no totem-pole centre-forward after the style of Niall Quinn and Tony Cascarino available.
This probably means that Reid will be employed wide on the right with Damien Duff in his best position on the left-wing. Clinton Morrison is the favourite to partner Robbie Keane at centre-forward.
The fact that Morrison has failed to score for Ireland in the course of his last nine games is not a source of confidence.
Robbie Keane, however, has maintained his excellent rate of a goal every two games and in the certain knowledge that Reid and Duff will maintain a superb supply for the strikers, they surely will harvest enough goals to get the job done.
The emergence of Reid in Kerr’s era represents the most exciting and the most encouraging feature of the past 18 months.
It was he who set the tone for what one hopes will be a bright beginning when he said: “Everybody has been brilliant with me since I came in, from the payers and coaching staff to the medical team. So I’ve found it really, really enjoyable and I just look forward to every training session and every game we play.
“It is brilliant to come away with Ireland, I cannot stop smiling every time I think about this big game coming up tomorrow.”
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