NIALL QUINN is again likely to be entrusted with much of the responsibility for ensuring a good team performance when Mick McCarthy takes his ambition and his apprehension into another big test against the US in Foxboro Stadium tomorrow.

Quinn led from the front when promoted to the captain for the first time last Sunday, with his late goal giving the new manager some respite in a 2-2 draw with Croatia.

Later, he was supplanted by Tony Cascarino in the starting line up for the game in Holland. But the unspoken message in the Irish camp is that Quinn's finely honed competitive qualities will now be redeployed in this game.

Although Cascarino is due back in Boston in time for the kick off after attending his mother's wedding in London yesterday, the Manchester City player will be required to provide the essential element of experience in the extensive rebuilding programme now in progress.

Packie Bonner, another survivor from the old regime, is on standby for a surprising recall when McCarthy announces his team after a training session at a local ground this morning.

Bonner, originally named as the goal keeping coach, but later assigned to more active service when Alan Kelly withdrew, will win his 79th cap if Shay Given fails to prove his recovery from a groin injury.

Given took a knock during a strenuous two hour session in the broiling heat yesterday morning. However, the manager is upbeat in his assessment of a potentially difficult situation.

His leg is still giving him some bother but, at this point, I still think he'll play," he said. "After some great performances in recent weeks, Shay is full of it just now and he's going to be there if at all possible.

Apart from a brief appearance for Celtic in McCarthy's testimonial game at Lansdowne Road last month, Bonner hasn't played a senior game all season, but he dismisses suggestions that the long absence could now prove expensive.

"I have kept myself in shape for precisely this kind of situation," he said. "Playing for Ireland still means a lot to me and if I'm asked to do a job on Sunday, I'll be as excited as anybody in the team."

Elsewhere, Gary Breen is likely to be given another opportunity to embellish a growing reputation in defence, and Keith O'Neill is likely to push David Connolly hard for the role of complementing Quinn in the front line.

There was a time when a meeting with a US team offered nothing more than a useful training session for the Irish, but the changed times are reflected in the current FIFA ratings which put she Americans in 14th place, their highest ever standing, with the Republic of Ireland languishing in 32nd position.

Another, even more compelling example of the development of the American team was their recent 2-1 win over Scotland at an advanced stage of Craig Brown's European Championship preparations.

Before that, they beat El Salvador and two of the teams they will face in the preliminaries for the 1998 World Cup, Guatemala and Trinidad and Tobago, with their only defeat in five games this year being inflicted by Brazil.

It all bespeaks the development of the game on this side of the Atlantic and McCarthy was speaking from the heart when he offered the opinion yesterday that a win tomorrow would rate as a major boost for his new look team.

Pouring scorn on the statement (of his American counterpart, Steve Sampson that the Irish would probably take a false sense of superiority into the game, he said. "That might have been valid when we last played here three years ago, but now the boot is on the other foot. On this occasion, the Americans have all the advantages in experience it is our lads who are likely to be under the cosh in the early stages.

"I never regarded this game as a soft touch. Not only are the Americans more experienced, but they will also have the advantage of playing in conditions which are foreign to us".

The temperature, when the match kicks off at 3.30 p.m. local time (8.30 p.m. Irish time), is likely to be in the high 80s and that is scarcely a reassuring prospect for players nearing the end of a long, exacting season.

Here were 20,000 spectators in the Foxboro Stadium when Los Angeles Galaxy beat Frank Stapleton's team New England Revolution who, incidentally, included former St Patricks' player Paul Keegan in the new American league on Thursday evening, and the expectation is that the figure will be doubled tomorrow.

On Thursday, it was the Mexican goalkeeper, Jorge Campos, playing for Los Angeles, who wooed the crowds. Now the big attraction may be another keeper, Brad Friedle, who earns his keep with the Turkish club Galatasaray.

Others deserving of the respect of the Irish are Eric Wynalda, who has scored 23 times in 70 international appearances and Cobi Jones and John Harkes who have seen service with Coventry City and Sheffield Wednesday respectively.

McCarthy, taking the lessons of Rotterdam last Tuesday on board, promises to resist the temptation of mass substitutions during the game. That, in itself, is a policy fraught with some risk in these kind of conditions. But if the Irish succeed in keeping their concentration at the back, we could have reason to celebrate a rare success tomorrow evening.