Tales of the unexpected

FAREWELL Brian, hello Lawrie - it's time to give the Republic job to a manager who can deliver the big results against the big nations.

Lovely hurling, eh? And it's not even Sunday yet.

That opening line, by the way, will form a key part of my application for a job with the English soccer rat pack. I'll be popping it in an envelope, along with a stained beer mat, a cigarette butt and a copy of 'Stick It Up Your Punter'. Hopefully, my application will be accepted while there is still a little flesh left on Sven's bones. I have the smell of blood in my nostrils and I want a part of that feeding frenzy.

As a fallback, we might even get a little action going here, a few appetite-whetting, bared-teeth snarls at the Greener. After Wednesday night's defeat by the French, you can already hear mutterings about Brian Kerr's security of tenure. Even with two games to go in a World Cup campaign and qualification still a live possibility, there are those who are only too willing to predict that the end is nigh for the manager. The fact that Merrion Square has left discussion of a new contract open until the end of the campaign only adds fuel to the fires of speculation.

Frankly, I think it's all a bit absurd. Short of Kerr, say, assassinating an FAI official, riffing about reincarnation and karma or presiding over back-to-back 6-0 defeats against Cyprus and Switzerland, I don't see any way that the he can so disfigure his copybook this side of Germany that he would deserve a summary P45. To date, there have been more positives than negatives about Kerr's reign, and, anyway, I happen to be of the increasingly old-fashioned view that a football manager deserves more than a single, full campaign in order to prove his fitness, or otherwise, for the fray.

But there I go myself, falling into the old trap of pondering what might happen backstage after the curtain drops when there are still hours of drama left on stage. With a minimum of two and a maximum of four matches still to play for Ireland in the qualifying campaign, the road to Germany remains open, if potentially circuitous. That's the good news.

The bad news is that our destiny is not in our own hands, in the sense that victories against the Cypriots and the Swiss would not necessarily be enough to guarantee second place. If the Swiss beat France, for example, all three nations would end up on 19 points at which stage - with head-to-head factor canceling itself out - goal difference between the three would come into play. Currently, Ireland are third in that table so we would be the ones playing catch-up.

The simplest route to the play-offs would see Ireland get the second spot by winning their two games, while the French win or a draw in Berne on October 8. Theoretically, Brian Kerr's team could still top the group but that would require that France take only one point or less from their last two games.

Infamously, the French have imploded in the past on the brink of what seemed like certain World Cup qualification, but it's probably too much to hope for a case of deja bleu in Ireland's hour of need.

Then again, if we have learned anything from Irish qualification for big tournaments in the past - from Gary Mackay's helping foot in 1987 onwards - it's that we should be prepared to expect the unexpected.

Northern Ireland's amazing victory over England reminded a few of us of the night in November in Windsor Park in 1993, when the Republic's qualification for US '94 was secured in such dramatic circumstances that, even after the referee's final whistle, some of the Irish players were unsure whether their 1-1 draw was enough to see them through.

The penultimate group game against Spain at Lansdowne Road was supposed to have put the seal on qualification, with the FAI planning a fiesta of fireworks at the ground to mark our passage to Amerikay. Then the Spanish turned up and won 3-1.

Things got even bleaker at Windsor Park when a spectacular Jimmy Quinn goal gave Northern Ireland the lead, but even with Alan McLoughlin's famous equaliser proving decisive for the Republic, there were Irish players at the final whistle who thought that, with Denmark also playing in Seville that night, the Republic still hadn't done enough to book a place in the States.

They had. Though the game in Seville went on for another four minutes, with some Irish players watching the action on a TV monitor at the side of the pitch in Windsor, Spain's 1-0 win confirmed that the Danes had lost out at our expense.

A young Roy Keane was one of the Irish players who thought at the final whistle that Ireland hadn't made it. When told that his efforts had not, in fact, been in vain, he could hardly believe it. On Sunday Press duty that night, I caught up with him about half an hour later. Clutching a beer and still flushed from his shower, he shook his head in disbelief, grinned and said: "I went from the worst moment of my career to the best in five seconds flat."

It's seems such a long time ago now but hopefully we will have Roy Keane, immense in the game against the French, back for the game against Switzerland at Lansdowne on October 12. But, before that, there's the game away to Cyprus which suddenly looks a whole lot trickier in the absence of Keane, Andy Reid and Clinton Morrison. France could do us a favour in Berne the same night but - forget the ifs and buts for now - all Brian Kerr and his team can do is ensure that hope is kept alive with a win in Cyprus.

The hoary old cliché of taking it one game at a time has never seemed more profound.