Big Mick keeps cool in a corner

ON the bad days the little interview room in the corner of Lansdowne Road seems claustrophobic. The walls close in oppressively. The crook nosed media sniff for carrion. The tape recorders whirr menacingly. The black loudspeakers hiss with white noise. In the little room yesterday Mick McCarthy wasn't in expansive mood.

"Yes," he said, opening safely with a statement of the obvious, "I'm disappointed. We wanted to win. We expected to win. We haven't played well on the day."

You can tell that Mick McCarthy dislikes these minutes sitting behind the desk playing politics instead of football, tap dancing around a disaster In the little room our business is more inquisitions than forensics. It's better to draw out a motive and regrets than dangle theories in front of the accused. What went wrong, Mick?

"Aye," says Mick. "We never got the chance to open them up. We always try and score a goal quickly. From the start of the game I like the players to put the ball in behind and just chase them for five or six minutes. It was a dull game and they did well to keep it that way. We didn't do enough to find that spark."

Bit too confident Mick?

"Some of you fellas maybe hyped it up that this game was going to be easy, and my colleague here (he turns to the beaming Icelandic manager), who has swallowed the Blarney Stone, told us all week that they were missing players and that he had a very hard game on his hands. But we were never over confident."

In the old days, when the Jack Charlton bandwagon was rollicking along at top speed, it seemed as if we were all in this business together? Did we do this well enough, Jack? Did we do enough of that, Jack! People like Mick McCarthy more, fear him less. Yet the distance is greater.

What lessons have you learned Mick?

"I've learned that if you go away from home and ii you sit in and defend and have players who'll throw themselves in front of balls and stick their foot in for everything and stop crosses, then you'll get results that nobody was expecting.

"Have learned that when teams do that you have to have somebody with a bit of individual flair and skill to break them down. On the day we didn't have anybody to do that."

Inevitably, Roy Keane gets mentioned. Good days and bad days, present or absent, Keane seems like the motif of the McCarthy era. Had the "Sammer" experiment in defence worked?

"I thought he played very well at the back," said McCarthy. "His strongest position is obviously still in midfield. I don't think if I'd played him in the middle it would have made a great deal of difference though."

What was the problem out there then?

"Once we did get in behind them we didn't have a big cross. They defended well. They have to be given credit.

"Maybe last March we weren't expected to win anything. We've improved. Iceland have come here and done a good job and stopped us playing."

Some of the boys fancy a little forensics. A question freighted with a little sarcasm comes McCarthy's way. Did we get good service to the boys in the penalty area, or did we put bad crosses in? I'm a little confused Mick.

"Do you not understand the difference between getting to the byline in free play and actually delivering a free kick," says McCarthy with a smile that feels like a frozen lake cracking open. "Because if you don't perhaps you shouldn't be in here asking questions.

They forced us to cross balls from 40, 45 yards out. They gobbled it up. It was easy for them. The good ball we put in came from dead balls."

Ho hum. It's winding up from that moment on. McCarthy runs through the motions, patiently explaining the substitutions for those of us with an impairment which prevent us seeing the obvious.

"Dennis Irwin was injured so I had to replace him and Ian Harte was a natural replacement for him. Put Kenny Cunningham on to allow Roy into midfield and to get Jason out wide because he is more attack minded. Hoped he'd get to take somebody on. Didn't happen."

Big Mick is keen to rise. Get out of the little room and back to his players. We're keen to be about the business of deadlines. It's months before we'll do business again.

"We might have to go and get a better result than was expected from somewhere else," says Mick "There's plenty of games to play."

No carrion. Mick McCarthy is still alive and kicking.