Victory hands McCarthy some breathing space

A good day's work and after a quick bout of score settling, this was as close as a Mick McCarthy's press conferences ever come to being a love in. With a week of media and management living in each other's pockets to come, a bad defeat could have been ugly for everybody but everywhere the relief was obvious and, most of all, it was obvious on the face of the Irish coach.

"The lads were superb," he said. "They gave the crowd a performance to be proud of and I think the crowd gave them one to be proud of back. I think there might be bandages, blood and crutches on the plane going out tomorrow because we've really worked so hard out there tonight, but I'm delighted. It's a hell of a schedule over the next week or so but with that win tonight we've given ourselves a bit of a breathing space."

It wasn't all good news and McCarthy admitted that he doesn't feel that Roy Keane, and possibly Denis Irwin, will play any further part in this brief run of games. That means that Lee Carsley and Ian Harte may be drafted in from the start on Saturday while other players may have to be brought in to bring up the numbers again.

"We have a squad of 22 but yes, and I'm sure there'll be some managers pissed off to read this tomorrow morning, but I'll be looking at adding one or two more players. Graham Kavanagh is one that springs to mind but there's also Gareth Whalley and Matty Holland, there's a few things that I could still do."

There will, he says, be a somewhat different approach in Zagreb where things are likely to be a good deal tougher. Nothing about last night, however, changed the way he views that game. "Of course, it's different. Ask any manager in the world about how they'd feel about the prospect of going there and turning over Croatia. It won't be easy but I already had a good idea of what I want to do in the game, it's just a question of sitting down tomorrow and looking at the personnel, seeing who is available."

Told that the Croatian manager Miroslav Blazevic was in the West Stand weighing up the Republic challenge on Saturday, McCarthy seemed justifiably confident that his rival would have been impressed.

"I don't want to get into all that propaganda stuff, but I think he'll have been looking at us and thinking they're not such a bad side. He'll be glad as well that the Yugoslavs have come here and given us such a hard game just a few days before we have to go out there and play his lot."

If these were the respectful lines along which Mr Blazevic was thinking, then he certainly wasn't giving that impression. "They were a fantastic side tonight but Ireland will have no chance in Zagreb. It will be very different music there," he told journalists before departing for the airport where a chartered plane awaited.

Part of his assessment rested on the fact that he believed Roy Keane was "divorced" from last night's game long before he was forced out of the action. Partly too, it was down to the fact that Dejan Savicevic had not had anything like the impact on the game that might have been expected from a player of his quality. "What we say tonight wasn't even the S in Savicevic," he sighed.

"Now we must win on Saturday and then hope that Macedonia can stop Ireland. I think they might because while they are good here they must now play three times away and I don't think they will be so strong on their travels."

From Vujadin Boskov the praise was hardly glowing either. "You played to win out there tonight, you played an honest game and for that I give credit. But there are more matches to play and for the players that I had to choose from tonight against Ireland I thought my players did very well."

Ah well, if you were short a few lads, you simply should have said so in the first place.