France v Republic of Ireland: Sometimes you wonder. At Charles de Gaulle Airport the men who had come to wage war looked like wanton boys writes Tom Humphries in Paris.

Charles de Gaulle is a globally respected centre for extemporaneous confusion, and as the Irish team joined with half the population of the free world in milling around the carousels attempting to liberate luggage, the lads in the tracksuits got buffeted and belted but otherwise ignored. Millionaires ain't used to such raw exposures to real life.

Sometimes when the Irish travel, the local media turn out in force at the airport to take photographs and interview arriving personalities like Messrs Kerr and Keane. The French have too much hauteur for that. The Irish plane was left waiting on the Tarmac for an age until a gate opened up.

Nobody should have flattered themselves, though, that there were mind games at work. Inside, amid the chaos, the players went unnoticed through the labyrinthine bowels of the airport, and when the carousel scrummage started they backed off and huddled in groups.

Through it all, Brian Kerr, immaculately suited up and oddly content-looking, buzzed and worked. A word for a player here, a whisper in that ear, a pat on that back. The Irish manager has no Off switch and the carousel at teeming Charles de Gaulle is as good a place as any to plant a little seed in a player's mind.

Without wanting to, of course, every Irish eye in the baggage concourse seeks out Roy Keane. Experienced scouts don't even begin to look in the direction of the mill at the carousel. Some distance away, removed but linked to the scene, Keane is chatting with a couple from home. He has his desperado stubble on, his face gaunt-thin beneath it. Johnny Fallon, the kitman, is at his right shoulder. Derek the security man is at his left shoulder. An assassin might get closer to George Bush.

There's a sense of quiet determination about this cadre of players. Those on the fringes are surprised, for instance, by the efforts Keane has made to reintegrate himself within a set-up which still carries some scarred survivors of Saipan.

They have been impressed, too, by the stoical silence those survivors have managed. The past is the past and is left there, and if Keane is never going to lead the boys in a few choruses of Knees Up Mother Brown, well, at least there is a mutual acceptance of the corresponding needs of everyone involved.

Outside, of course, it's Paris and the chaos of the airport spreads to the streets and, more specifically, to the traffic.

This is a city where you drive with panache or you don't drive at all. The meek shall inherit the footpaths.

The Irish are billeted not far from St Denis in a hotel close to training facilities and the Stade de France.

The media have been placed, out of sight and out of mind, in the centre of town near a square which just six years ago was filled with swaying, 65-foot-tall inflatable giants as France celebrated the start of a World Cup that would mark their renaissance as a significant footballing force.

There is a sense now that the great era is over and a fear, too, that the Irish are allowing the gloom which hangs over the French squad to go to their heads a little.

The French media are full of anecdotes about the supposed disarray of their squad and all are still distracted by the racially-tinged spat between France and Spain, with Robert Pires weighing in yesterday with his view that the Spanish manager should be "sued for racial aggression".

Amid the keening surrounding the various absences of Zidane, Vieira, Thuram, Makelele, Trezeguet and Giuly, however, it would be easy to form the impression that the French are being forced to draft players in from the ranks of the infirm and indigent.

One ball popped behind the Irish defence for Thierry Henry to chase tomorrow night will have a jarringly sobering impact.

Until then, though, the green-shirted Irish fans who make their way finally from the intestines of the airport out into the warm Paris air will be en fête. Nothing like anticipation.