Locker Room: The great thing about sport is tomorrow. There's never an absolute ending for sport. Careers and attachments end but sport goes on as relentlessly as a river, writes Tom Humphries.

Unless you are taking up a job with the FAI you never actually pass under a sign that says, Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here. The past year or so in Irish soccer has been filled with unhappy endings. It's time to taste some tomorrow.

A year on, the FAI is digesting Genesis and you have to hope they can keep it down, because with the blazers in question we know that, regardless of what happens, things can't get any worse. A little more than a year on we've put some blue water between ourselves and Saipan and we've managed to become accustomed to (if not happy about) the sight of Irish players disporting themselves energetically on the playing fields of England while tragically unable to continue turning up for Irish games.

So, tomorrow week, the Brian Kerr era begins in earnest. For sure, he's been clocking in early and leaving late every day for nearly a year, but next week's game with Canada is when the business really begins. He's not cleaning up anyone else's mess anymore. He's sculpting a team of his own.

Basel will still be stuck in his craw, of course, and there's too much devil in him to even consider the possibility that not going to Portugal next summer mightn't be such a bad thing after all. He would have liked the chance to plot a few ambushes and get things stirring again.

The team expired in Basel, though, and with it went the last mores and customs of the Mick McCarthy era.

A month or so on it's hard not to feel that in the long term maybe things are better this way. Having been handed the wheel of a sinking ship, Brian Kerr has steered it to port and can supervise a decent refit before setting off again.

Indeed, were we to take the metaphor on an epic voyage of its own we could say that he doesn't have to set sail with a crew loyal to another captain, he can recruit on the dockside, etc, etc.

And by dint of Basel he has been given some space. The campaign for Germany 2004 won't begin for almost a year. Kerr will drum his fingers impatiently, but a year will mean a lot to John O'Shea. And to Liam Miller. And to Andy Reid and two or three others.

It will mean a lot even to comparative old-timers like Damien Duff and Robbie Keane, who unfairly or otherwise are now the kind of players we look to for leadership.

The current situation, wherein the larder ain't bare but it's not brimming with world-class players either, is a timely reminder of our crazed delusions. For quite some time now we have been blessed in that, despite ourselves almost, we have produced top players almost in relay. At midfield, for instance, the international careers of Giles, Brady and Keane almost overlapped, and in the few years which separated Keane and Brady we didn't suffer. Likewise we have been blessed with a stream of great centre halves and what seemed like a never-ending supply of tall forwards good in the air.

Now it is fortunate that the year ahead gives Kerr the chance to thoroughly ignore the clamour we hacks make whenever we spot a player with a remote chance of making a living in the game. We want the kids fast-tracked to international glory immediately. No manager ever gets kudos for leaving a player out until he's ready.

We should know better.

Liam Miller is a case in point. The kid is saddled with a headline-friendly name and for the foreseeable future news stories about him will appear under the words Miller Time, while any feature story will be billed as The Miller's Tale.

There is no doubt Liam Miller is a hugely exciting prospect, but the combination of Ireland's desperate want in the midfield sector and the fact that he plays for Celtic (our quasi-national team) have probably distorted our view of where he is at and how quickly he can get to where we want him to be. It used to be said that a player needs 15 internationals in order to adapt. Miller won't have that luxury.

Miller played wonderfully for Celtic against Anderlecht the other night, but (unavoidably) it was a young man's performance, the contribution of a footballer surfing into sight along the crest of a wave of confidence. It should be borne in mind also that Anderlecht were a moderate side having an off-night, while the sides against which Miller plays most weeks in the SPL are just plain poor.

You could forgive Miller for going a little crazy. A breakthrough with a beloved club, a big night, Parkhead seething. You could almost see the adrenalin fizzing inside him. And why not? In the years he's been at Celtic, Miller has seen plenty of Irish talent (most notably Colin Healy, Ger Crossley and Michael Doyle) play its way to the fringes of the first team only to fade away. Running non-stop till cramp seizes the engine might be one way to ensure hooped longevity.

The rest of us should be cautious. On Wednesday, he ran everywhere with scampering enthusiasm, got his reward with a fine goal and milked a sustained round of deserved applause when he left the field with cramp with quarter-of-an-hour to go.

Occasionally from the blur that was Miller it was possible to ascertain that his base was the right side of a midfield diamond, but he popped up everywhere like a figure in a video game. In a year he will, we hope, be an established player and he won't be quite so full of coltish running, won't be popping up in all the least-expected places. He will be a more mature talent and, on an international level, it's justifiable to hope that enough of his zest remains to revive a moribund Irish team.

Players get older and they settle and fade and change. They become sated. They get injuries. They settle for things, too. It mightn't have been the most tender and sensitive thing Roy Keane ever said about his Irish team-mates, but he had a point when he counterpointed his bottomless hunger with that of others who settled for less.

He was right, though. After years of struggling to always get on the team above, players settle in the end. They find a place they like and money they can live handily on and plenty of applause and they settle. They're human. They're footballers.

Keane is the exception for whom no game has ever been a workaday affair, a case of submitting 90 minutes and picking up a cheque.

Liam Miller's is a palm we haven't yet read. Since his days on Irish youths' teams Miller's name was always uttered by comrades when asked about which of their number would "make it". That making it has been a slow process might be a mercy. As it has been with Andy Reid.

We've seen too many Mark Kennedys and Stephen McPhails, spotted before their first shave, blooming precociously by late teenagehood and then wilting quickly. We've seen the Kevin Grogans and Richie Sadliers and Keith O'Neills deprived of their prime through injury.

When we sit and talk about the next generation and the new wave, we're talking about kids who are lucky to have survived this far and who will be luckier still to survive and meet our aspirations for them.

Miller and Reid will be a couple of points of interest next week in Lansdowne Road. So too will Rory Delap, who has been mysteriously under-utilised by us for half a decade. All others are further down the queue. Elliot and Flood at Man City. Yates and Kelly of Spurs. Ryan and Butler of Sunderland.

The job ads for the posts waiting to be filled on the current team would suggest that creativity, experience and drive are what is needed. Comparatively late in his career, Delap might be a perfect fit. So might Graham Kavanagh.

Last week it was the kids who did what they always do, stole the headlines and got the mouth watering. It might be older, steadier hands who hear their names chanted in Lansdowne next month.