Kerr's golden touch works again

You have to concentrate really hard these days on some of his rougher times with St Patrick's Athletic to remember what exactly Brian Kerr looks like without a smile on his face. The smile he wore as he paraded the European Youth Championship trophy in front of the Irish fans in Larnaca, Cyprus, last night will probably have to be surgically removed at some point over the months ahead.

The under-16s victory in Scotland was a spectacular success for the Dublin-born team manager and his coach Noel O'Reilly, but to complete the UEFA double in the space of 11 weeks, well . . . a lesser man might have been left speechless. Kerr, needless to say, wasn't, but even he was having some difficulty taking it all in. As his players carved out a commanding lead in the penalty shoot-out, he admitted to believing that it was simply too good to be true.

"It was difficult because even though we were ahead I was thinking, after winning the under-16s, this is all too crazy, so it just seemed that they'd come back at us because that's just the sort of thing that happens." Not to him in recent history. The game, he said, had been tough enough until Ireland took that lead. "Like the England game," he said, "with them making it difficult for us to get the ball down and play our game. After Alan's [Quinn] goal, though, I thought we were comfortable and we could have scored another in the closing minutes, but they were some team and the equaliser was a real sickener." After extra time the Irish manager strode onto the pitch with the intention of naming the penalty takers himself, but "a couple of them said that their legs were gone and when I looked at it I had five people lined up and so we went with them".

"We started the penalties and you were looking at Robbie [Keane] saying, `well, he'd be okay', but when his one didn't go in I was starting to find it hard to keep looking at it."

Somewhat calmer, it turned out, was Liam George, a 19-year-old striker who has a mere half dozen first-team games with his club, Luton Town, under his belt. "I was thinking," said George as he attempted to describe the moment he stepped up to take the kick, "that the whole Irish nation is watching me, they're depending on me to score this and I have to put this away."

Pause, laughter . . . "Nah, seriously, I wasn't thinking that at all, I just put the ball down on the spot, I was very relaxed, very confident that I was going to score, and I just stroked the ball home."

For Barry Quinn this was the greatest moment of his young life. "Hopefully I'll go on to greater things in the years ahead," said the Irish captain, as he left a noisy dressing-room, "but picking up the trophy was definitely the highlight of my career so far." Germany's equalising goal, which came just 10 seconds from the end of normal time was, he added, "heartbreaking".

"We still thought we could win the game and I was really happy with the way we all played when the game went into extra time."

Alan Quinn's season started at Cherry Orchard and ended with him playing first-team football at Sheffield Wednesday. Yesterday he faced the prospect of missing the biggest game of his life due to an ankle ligament injury, but ended up scoring the opening goal of a European final. The young Dubliner passed a fitness test only to be left out of the starting line-up by Kerr. "I was a bit disgusted by that, but then for things to end up like this is like a dream come true.

"I was playing a couple of one-twos with Robbie Keane and this time, when he got into the box, I was screaming at him to get it back to me. When it came back across I just hit it and when it went in I didn't even know how to celebrate."

It's another sign that the teenager is developing a knack for scoring goals on the big occasions. If it's one he manages to maintain, his manager may well be still grinning like a Cheshire cat when he steps off the plane from next year's World Championships in Nigeria.