AS SEÁN St Ledger and Caleb Folan continued to ease their way into things, Paul McShane made a surprise appearance at the Republic of Ireland team training camp in Malahide yesterday. The 23-year-old defender joins the squad after making a quicker than expected recovery from knee surgery but he is not expected to play any part in Saturday’s World Cup qualifier in Cyprus.

In fact, Ireland assistant coach Marco Tardelli suggested the player’s arrival in Dublin had been the idea of the management at Hull City, who doubtless saw it as the obvious place for their new recruit to work on his fitness given that a fair chunk of the rest of the squad was already here (the Italians, it seems, have a similar sort of reliance on Juventus players).

In any case, McShane, Folan, Stephen Hunt, Kevin Kilbane and the rest of the Irish players head for Cyprus this morning and while Tardelli appreciates that those who were involved in the 5-2 humiliation three years ago are not keen to dwell on the matter, the Italian insists the current group should not be too hung up on the failings shown that night.

“I think the players are very ashamed of that match,” he said. “But, for me, it’s normal that sometimes you have the big defeat. It’s normal.

“Afterwards, you just start again. I think so, and it’s another team now. It’s another mentality. Because Giovanni is a good coach, he makes sure that the players’ mentality is good.

“Now, the Irish team believes in itself so this can be a very different game.”

The two Italians might never have ended up in their current jobs had it not been for the drubbing Ireland took the last time they visited Nicosia’s GSP Stadium and by the time the pair had started they were, he says, entirely au fait with the events of that night.

The regularity with which the game is brought up at press conferences can have left little doubt in the minds of the Trapattoni and Tardelli just how darkly it is viewed here, but the former Juventus midfielder cautions against attaching too much importance to what he insists was little more than a freak result.

“We knew everything about that game when we arrived,” he says. “And we knew also that it’s not a true result. It was an incredible result.

“Also Albania against Cyprus last month (6-1 to the Albanians) was an incredible result. I watched the DVD for the first half and it’s a normal match but after they changed two or three players and Albania got a penalty that wasn’t deserved, everything was different. It was an incredible result, Cyprus played well and I don’t understand why they lost 6-1.”

On the face of it, the scale of the defeat is encouraging, particularly after Ireland’s deflating loss to Australia in Limerick but then Cyprus came into the October 2006 game off the back of a 6-1 hammering by Slovakia and showed few obvious signs of demoralisation on the night.

Like his boss, Tardelli insists that a draw would be better than losing but acknowledges that, with top spot in the group still far from decided, a win is the aim.

To achieve even the more modest target, the visitors will presumably have to be better than they were at Thomond Park but the Italian certainly sees that as an achievable goal.

“Like in Bulgaria, it’s possible to play very well, to play a very good match,” he says.

“The hope is that the performance is not similar to Australia but similar to Bulgaria. ”

As for how the rest of the group pans out this weekend and over the weeks that follow, Tardelli doesn’t reckon the Irish should be expecting any favours.

“I don’t think so,” he says with a smile. “I think that Italy will win against Georgia but we believe in our potential, in ourselves. We don’t have to rely on a gift from Italy and we’re not looking for one.

“If we win in Cyprus it’s, maybe, 90 per cent that we go to second in the race for South Africa, it’s possible to play in the play-off. But if we win it’s also possible to play for first in the table. And Italy, if we win in Cyprus, it’s possible that they will be afraid.

“Italy’s coach has changed six or seven players in the team, and when you do that the team changes.

“They are less experienced, the new players, they have still to become used to playing in international team.

“I think it (Italy) is a good team but so is Ireland and if we win in Cyprus, we will have nothing to lose against Italy.”

The notion of Italy being nervous in Dublin is an attractive one but not since Holland back in 2001 has a big team come here and not gone away with the result that they needed.

A win for Ireland in Nicosia would at least keep the pressure on the world champions. Another defeat, on the other hand, and the idea of putting one over on Marclello Lippi side’s next month will seem more than a little fanciful.