France joust may restore Kerr twinkle

Sideline Cut: The appearance of France at Lansdowne Road looms and without any warning the defining hour of the Brian Kerr administration is upon us.

The day the effervescent Dublin man was appointed to the tainted post of Irish manager was unforgettable to behold. Kerr's combination of pride and humility at having made it to the most high-profile post in Irish sport without the usual CV of cross-water achievements made him a radiant figure.

There was an air of celebration in the hotel ballroom that afternoon. The place had the atmosphere of an inspired political rally. You often read about the rare sense of hope and high humour that the Kennedy conventions evoked across America during the early 1960s. Kerr's appointment seemed to touch upon those strings of unapologetic idealism in people hardened by the failings, disappointments and treacheries that too often haunted Irish soccer. Faces from Kerr's long graft to the front line of Irish soccer, from old League of Ireland accomplices to press men who had talked football with him through late nights in smoky bars, all turned up to witness what felt like an historic occasion.

Many people seemed to see in Kerr's appointment some kind of personal victory and after the poisonous and hopeless last days of Mick McCarthy's period in charge, it made people smile again. It may have been born of desperate circumstances but in choosing someone reared on domestic fare, the FAI seemed, for once, to have made a statement that evoked a certain sense of self-confidence.

Those thoughts of Kerr hugging well- wishers and machine-gunning jokes through the microphone occurred once more as television images of the manager standing sombrely on the line were broadcast late on Wednesday night. The mischievous expression with which he led those talented underage Irish teams to prodigious feats has more or less disappeared. His face has become leaner since those happy-go-lucky days and more pensive. It is harder to detect the twinkle in his eyes and although he is a natural talker, the pressure of his position has taught him to be more succinct and wary.

He has mastered a neutral, flinty look during games, consulting his watch or talking with Chris Hughton with the same calm purpose regardless of what is happening on the field. You think back to Mick McCarthy and although he thrust that Barnsley jaw outward in a show of defiance, there were days when he simply could not disguise the hurt in those soft, brown eyes of his. Or you see Sven-Goran Eriksson sitting with a petrified smile on his face in Denmark the other night as his pampered and feted England disgraced themselves against an ordinary Scandinavian team.

The management game can physically alter the appearance of its players. Jack Charlton, oddly enough, was one of the rare men who seemed at home standing at the dug-out of those era-defining soccer afternoons, cartoonish and angular in his tweeds and cotton browns, like a Herefordshire farmer surveying his land. But then Charlton was also one of those peculiar individuals who was simply not hardwired to contemplate his own shortcomings.

His narrow Yorkshire world view and a bullish sense of infallibility, copper-plated by dominance within no-nonsense Leeds United and his place on the England team of 1966, protected him from the dark musings and sleepless nights that McCarthy, a more sensitive man, suffered for the cause.

And when Jack was told that we Irish would be eternally grateful for his arrival on these shores, that we regarded him in the same light as the Pope or Kennedy or Gay Byrne, he fully believed it. Even on the miserable night in Anfield when his last team was dazzled and left for dead by a Dutch team featuring Patrick Kluivert on the cusp of a glorious future that never was, Charlton managed to walk away unscathed, the hero of the hour.

Charlton was an exception. For other men, from Eoin Hand to McCarthy and now Kerr, the Irish job comes with a residual pressure, both internally and externally, to deliver. The job is not as extravagantly torturous as the England post or the recriminations so jeering or laced with self-loathing, but, nonetheless, being the Ireland manager is a risky business.

So far, Kerr has managed to keep all the emotion beneath the surface. The first rumble of discontent was heard back when he guided an insipid Irish team through an astonishingly flat 90 minutes in Bas.

That defeat to Switzerland ended the remote chance of rescuing qualification for Euro 2004 from McCarthy's calamitous exit. But since then he effected the return of Roy Keane to the Irish team with admirable diplomacy and he has made no real mistakes through what has been a tough qualifying group.

The one element that has been absent is something Charlton, the old rogue, seemed to possess in abundance: luck. The first important goal scored for Ireland under Charlton was by Gary MacKay, playing for Scotland in Sofia. Charlton was blessed.

Given Charlton's luck, a goal like that which Clinton Morrison whipped home in the dying minutes of Wednesday night's friendly against Italy would have stood. And instead of musing over the tactical adventurousness employed by Kerr, the focus would have been on the lengthening of a remarkable unbeaten run at Lansdowne Road - and against the glamorous Italians at that.

Watching Damien Duff, holding down a starting place at the most lucrative club in the world but thundering into the referee after his poor decision to cancel Morrison's strike, you couldn't but feel there is so much right about Ireland under Kerr.

But will it be enough? With the return of the French rearguard led by the irrepressible Zinedine Zidane, the most exciting international team of the last 10 years seems once again touched by destiny. They will land in Dublin cleansed of all the doubt and moodiness that has made them such an inhibited and stricken force under Raymond Domenech and will surely press Shay Given's goal in the belief that only one team can win. Valiant and organised as Kerr's tenure has been, the last-minute goal out in Israel and the surrendering of a promising two-goal advantage at home make louder the nagging voice that suggests when it comes down to it, Ireland just might get squeezed out at the last. Still, better to live or die against a French team containing Zidane, a footballer who defined soccer during the last days of the 20th century. His return to French colours, facing Roy Keane in the twilight of his own remarkable career, transforms another important soccer game into an occasion of true import.

When Kerr strode up to congratulate Marcello Lippi on Wednesday evening, the dapper Italian studied his Irish counterpart in a distracted way for a long moment, as if he couldn't quite put a name to the face. Then he shook Kerr's hand enthusiastically and the Irish man turned smartly on his heels.

Perhaps it will take a monumental night of football before Kerr's name and reputation fully register among the aristocrats of the European game. The best thing about meeting France is that we have yet to see Kerr's true personality emerge, yet to see the impish, take-on-the-world grin break through the solemn mask of professionalism. The thing that used to strike you about Kerr was that he looked like a man completely in thrall to the game of soccer and you felt like a curmudgeon if you couldn't share that joy.

France and Ireland in the rickety old tin box at Lansdowne Road is one of those immense occasions when the entire country battens down the hatches and obsesses on what is happening on the field. And Brian Kerr is at the heart of it all.

If that doesn't bring the twinkle back, then soccer has let him down.