The Zalgiris Stadium in Vilnius is a curiously ramshackle place. Yesterday morning the grounds man arrived driving a dark hearse. He parked his vehicle on the grey concrete margin of the playing field and unloaded the tool of his trade. He spent the better part of the afternoon riding around the patchy grass atop a little lawnmower which looked as if it might buckle if it encountered an especially doughty tangle of daisies. He wore a superfluous pair of earmuffs and he took good care to avoid slipping into the muddy craters which distinguish both goalmouths.

The dressing rooms are novel, too. The Irish won't tighten their studs and don their jerseys on the traditional wooden benches this evening; they will lounge instead on rich burgundy armchairs in a room fitted with a chalkboard, a samovar and three dartboards.

Once outside, the Irish will scarcely be deafened by the tumult and din. Lithuania is basketball country and soccer's grip on the public imagination is feeble. Just 8,000 attended last Saturday's crunch game with Macedonia.

Yesterday, in the bowels of the Zalgiris Stadium, Mick McCarthy sat and faced the media yet again. It has been a long trip and the column inches have been filled with little that is new or novel and much that has been hostile or at least questioning.

Even in the context of a team going through transition, Ireland should have enough talent to get through tonight's challenge in relatively straightforward fashion. Yet no breeze of contagious confidence issues from the manager. The man who sat in the armchair yesterday afternoon facing the media had a pair of boots in his hands. The studs had fresh mud and grass stuck to them. McCarthy had been playing football with his players. The smile which had lit up his face for those 30 minutes had, however, vanished.

This worried, slightly cantankerous figure is not the Mick McCarthy who accepted the Irish management job over 18 months ago. The mild drizzle of press criticism which he has endured seems to have chilled him to the marrow.

His porous sensitivity is a little baffling. Almost universally, Irish people wish McCarthy well.

The press have been generally supportive and understanding of his attempts to develop a young team who play good football. The FAI (quite rightly) have rewarded McCarthy with an extended contract which insulates him from idle speculation about his future. His team have certainly let him down from time to time, but he is extracting unprecedented levels of enthusiasm from the likes of Roy Keane and is in the happy position of seeing a crop of youngsters appear on the fringes of the international stage, three or four of whom might become good senior players.

Yet when Mick McCarthy sits to talk to the media his body language and tone screams hostility. McCarthy has suffered these media gatherings on training fields, in conference rooms, at airports and in dressing rooms, his mood shifting between gruff reticence and peevishness. His team still sit and chat with the press when asked, but it has become more common for them to cite the manager's name when excusing unnecessarily guarded comments. Whatever happens behind the dressing room door is sacrosanct.

McCarthy still adheres to the principles of playing good football, but as the stakes get higher with every game there seems to be less romance in his methods and more desperation. His team don't exude the happy confidence they brought with them in the early days of McCarthy's stewardship.

Yesterday, in Vilnius, McCarthy refused to announce who his captain would be ("I don't want you fellas asking other players why he has it, why hasn't somebody else got it."), declined to give any hint of the shape or composition of his team ("I know, that's enough.") and spoke ungraciously about his Lithuanian hosts who had waited until after the Irish training session to mow the grass on the Zalgiris pitch ("If they think that will piss us off they've got to be joking.").

His decision to treat every press conference with the enthusiasm and elaborate caution he might bring to crossing a minefield while blindfolded is disappointing for those who have enjoyed him on the days when he is relaxed and tossing salty football anecdotes about the place.

McCarthy is a bigger character then he is allowing himself to be, and his team (with a few celebrated exceptions) have more maturity than he credits them with. The siege mentality which they have coaxed themselves into doesn't suggest a side who are striding confidently to a golden destiny.

Last Saturday's ultimately worthwhile extravaganza of error in Reykjavik brought no bugled fanfare to the manager's ears. In retrospect, McCarthy seems quiet ly satisfied that the mood in the dressing room before that escapade was one of defiance and beleaguered team solidarity. As one senior player described it: "We just said screw the critics, screw the media, screw being pretty. Let's just go and win the game."

What critics? It is arguable that Ireland have handed these who are paid to assess their performances more than enough bullets. Apart from the usual suspects, the media and other paid experts have held their fire. Most of the cartridges are unspent.

With regard to the screwing of the critics: McCarthy is entitled to enjoy the benefits any heightened motivation in a side whose technique has been unreliable. The exaggerated response to wounds which scarcely required band-aid, however, doesn't augur well for the broad health of a side hoping to cope with the pressure cooker of a World Cup.

Ireland, in transition, have dropped out of the top rank of international sides, but even that fails to account for the fact that Liechtenstein are the only side to whom the team haven't dropped points. McCarthy, endlessly loyal to his young team, has clearly resented some of the criticism which has been cast their way and rejects any suggestion that his selection policies have been erratic. Yet even he must know that, having stumbled to the threshold of opportunity, failure tonight will be hard for the Irish public to digest.

Tonight, McCarthy will draw on the threatened soul of the team. "When your back is to the wall you are doing it for yourself. The team has come together that way," says McCarthy. "The atmosphere is good and they are working for each other. There's defiance there."

If Ireland come out of the Zalgiris stadium with anything less than a win, the trip home immediately afterwards is likely to be perilous. Mick McCarthy is unlikely to come out smiling; indeed, the build up of frost between the manager and the media could interfere with cockpit instruments.

If it all finishes here tonight in this small and curious town, it will be poignantly fitting. This has been a most extraordinary World Cup qualifying campaign. McCarthy's side have huffed and puffed on a relatively gentle slope. If they hit the summit sometime soon, perhaps then the perspective will be better and the mood will be lighter.