Kerr just happy to win

The players were smiling again as they made their way towards the team bus and Brian Kerr was back in top form as he found himself being treated once again as coach of potential champions.

"Who do you rate as the main threats," one local journalist asked, prompting a particularly broad grin from the Dubliner.

"Well, to be honest," he beamed, "I haven't seen too many of the other teams play. The reception on the telly in my room isn't the best, so if any of yiz know a fella who knows about tellys, tell him there's a bit of work going up at the Premier Hotel."

When the chuckling died down, Kerr conceded that he was just happy the side had now won a game. Worrying about main threats for the championship was another day's work, while this had been a fine one.

"It was hard going out there, but, jaysus, they were superb. Where they got the energy to keep going is beyond me, but the midfield won the game out there tonight," Kerr said.

"Stephen (McPhail), especially, had a great game, probably his best game for Ireland. But I thought everybody around him was great. There was a huge amount of concentration from everyone and I really couldn't have asked for more."

The two goals were, he agreed, as good as they come. Damien Duff's was virtually a repeat of one he scored in Malaysia two summers ago, while McPhail's was the sort more often drawn in comic books than scored in major competitions.

The manager's main emotion, though, when the Leeds midfielder popped up to score the first, was primarily relief, for by then he was starting to fear a repeat of Sunday's frustration.

"When you see them fail to put away a couple of chances you start to worry about how many you're going to get," he said. "Richard Sadlier had already had one very good chance and I was disappointed that he didn't get the ball in the net. Then, after Damien had done so well to get to the line, I thought Richard might score with a header.

"When he missed it, I thought Ger Crossley might get onto the loose ball and score, and when his shot was cleared by the defender I thought the chance was gone. Then Stephen arrived and his finish was magnificent."

Magnificent wasn't a word that McPhail was going to get drawn into using about his own handiwork, but he allowed himself, reluctantly, "pretty good".

"Yeah, it was probably one of the best goals I've scored, up there anyway. But generally I thought everybody did well out there tonight and that's the main thing."

The young midfielder agreed with his manager that the threat of premature elimination from these championships had played on everybody's minds early on, but: "They were always going to be good, we knew that, and we knew that we had to settle into our own passing game. If we could get that going we always felt we could go on and score a few goals."

Duff, on the other hand, had remained untroubled by those early exchanges. "We're an experienced bunch of lads, most of them were there when they won the European championships last year, so I don't think it affected anybody too much. It just took 10 or 15 minutes to get going, after that I thought we did all right."

A repeat performance on Saturday might still mean topping this group, but for Kerr, at this stage just qualifying would be enough. "Finishing second would leave me happy at this stage. After that, anything would just be a bonus."