Manager's reaction: Tom Humphries sees a spring back in Brian Kerr's step as his harvest comes in

Some good news to stir the life into a lazy old September day. Roy Keane is back and, just as importantly, Brian Kerr is back. The old Brian Kerr.

Gone is the wary imposter of the last two years and restored to us is the warm, witty guy we loved to gather around in the days when he was The Greener. Back then he was committed to giving us sufficient material with which to compile a lexicon of great Greenerisms. We listened and scribbled and loved it all.

He's lost a stone or two over the summer and maybe a hair or two up top has been sacrificed to worry but the old glint is back and when he breezed into the bandroom in Lansdowne on Saturday afternoon on the back of the three-nil gutting of Cyprus, he looked like a man comfortable in his shoes once again.

For a year or two he has looked like a man worried that familiarity might breed disrespect. That caution and the weight of having taken over a fractured, disintegrating team jaded from controversy and retirement parties and lingering Keano troubles seemed to steal his zest for a while but now . . . This was his 20th match in charge and his record stands comparison with anyone's. His 13th win was convincing not just in terms of the margin, but in what it revealed about the work in progress that is Kerr's Ireland side.

Three goals. Three points. And an emphatic landmark in the Kerr era. Games like this have given Irish teams so much trouble in the past and despite the manager's modest claim that it wasn't as easy as it looked, this was a perfunctory duty well exercised.

Injury had stolen the central midfield and rustiness would have been an alibi for both strikers and the left winger but in the end there was no need for postmortems.

"Yeah, a very good performance," smiled Kerr, fielding a soft opener concerning Clinton Morrison. "Clinton had a good goal-scoring record when he started. In my first match he got a goal. The game here against Romania, I think he had a really good game in terms of running the play, winning headers, keeping possession up the pitch. He could have scored earlier today but he got his reward."

In the grouting between the lines you could see the evidence of work and planning. A year and a half's worth of work has been poured into making this side bear it's maker's mark. The evidence was everywhere on Saturday. No big man. No headlong rushes. Necklaces of passes and the patient vigilance of lighthouse keepers were the trademarks. Not the giddy but basic olé, olé, olé stuff but the product of cerebration and planning.

Brian Kerr speaking about Andy Reid, for instance, was as much of a revelation as Andy Reid himself has been through his nine-match career. There's somebody at Tottenham Hotspur FC who should be getting their P45 today for not ponying up the money to have brought Reid to London. Kerr has better vision.

"It was a great goal today by Andy. Sometimes we saw about fellas that they are scorers of great goals. They mightn't be great goalscorers but they score great goals. Andy is a bit of a mixture. Great goal today."

And was Reid deliberately liberated to be allowed inside, away from the sideline?

"We try not to be too rigid in the shape, you have those players with that skill, if you restrict them to a line hugging position people can play them out of the game. I think both of them have the potential to score goals when they play inside.

"There's not general acceptance of that theory but you look at Damien (Duff) when he has gone inside how many goals he has got for us and you allow Andy to come in off the wing you can see what he does he gets a goal today like that.

"With Andy Reid, since November last year he's been developing. We picked the games so he could develop. We started with Canada. And the games got harder. Brazil. The Czech Republic. Different games. He's matured over those games. Each match he's taken on the task. I think the match in Holland was particularly important because there was so much to be done in terms of the away match. He did well today for us alright.

"It's not good fortune, it's the work that's been done over many years by coaches and managers. Vincent Butler picking the right players at under-15, our own underage international structure. I remember Andy long ago, in Iceland in the Nordic Cup, he got the winning goal from the tip off. Two-all in the match against England. He said to Robert Doyle 'play it there and I'll have a go at it'. The only time in my life I've seen a player score like that from the tip off. The experience of that gives a player confidence. It's not just good luck."

Perhaps that explains the return of the lightness in Kerr's step. His harvest is coming in. On Wednesday, Reid and Duff will persecute from out wide. Robbie Keane will seek sole possession of the Irish scoring record at just 24 years of age. Ireland will be as Greener as they are green.

He goes to a town to face a team who have given us nothing over the past couple of years. Expectations aren't outrageous and Kerr won't be checking in any excess hubris but the football learning he wears so lightly is impressive.

Switzerland's diamond formation? "Our formation is hard enough to deal with. We have lots of good individual players. Part of the process, though, has been playing against teams in different formations over the past while. Like 3-5-2 against Romania. Holland had a diamond and so on.

"I'll tell you about Switzerland on Wednesday night. I won't assess them now. I thought they played well at the European Championships. Lost a goal against the run of play when they were down to 10 men against England. It was one-all against France with quarter of an hour to go. Croatia they drew with. I thought they played quite well.

"We've got good players. We have to play our game. We got no points from either game the last time around. Anything from Wednesday would be an improvement. We won't going there for a draw. We'll be going to win the game. I never liked the idea of a draw will do us. In 1990 with Pat's we went to Drogheda knowing a draw would do to win the league. The approach we had was to go and win it though."

Is he better equipped now than on his last excursion to Basel? "Am I better equipped!" he laughs "You mean is the team? Last time the big loss was losing Kenny (Cunningham). We moved 'Josh' (John O'Shea) inside. He's a more mature player now. They understand what we want. They were better than us. They got a start. We had to chase the game. I think now the players know more about what we want from them, the way we want to play. We'll see."

And he grins and thanks everyone and heads off, turning his back on the country behind, face towards the land ahead.