McCarthy embraces the game's finer points

Mick McCarthy comes into the band room looking dapper and determined. We media chickens are all over the coop, our feathers ruffled by the Portuguese who have circulated cliches among themselves without translating them for our benefit. Our phrase book tells us that right now we are as infirm as gaily coloured talking birds.

McCarthy is asked about the incident at the end, where he was dragged away from Antonio Oliveira by Eusebio. "You know what there was before that?" says Mick, surprised, it seems, to be asked. "There was a fantastic pulsating game of football which ebbed and flowed. We had some good spells, they had some bad spells. I think it was a terrific game. We could have won, we could have lost . . . that doesn't interest me, the other thing."

Unfortunately for Mick we have just been through a press conference where people talked about that which was only of interest to themselves in a language comprehensible only to themselves. The spirit of journalistic inquiry must be restored. McCarthy acquiesces to the fourth estate. "The story is I went to shake his hand. He wouldn't shake my hand. For what reason I don't know. I've always been led to believe . . . even as a player, I could go out and have a ding-dong battle no matter who it's with and, end of game, I shake hands. If he doesn't want to shake hands that's fine. I shouldn't have reacted the way I did and I apologise for that - it made me angry." That wasn't so hard. We ask him if Luis Figo was a good hugger. If the game was all about hugging would he be the most expensive hugger in the world? "I'd sooner have a hug off Figo than off their coach anyway," says Mick with admirable certainty.

There follows an interlude of momentary sourness where McCarthy attacks us "wallys" for making "some filth" out of the hug thing, a thought which hadn't occurred to most of us. Behind me a voice says quietly, "so Johnny Foreigner really doesn't like it up him." Luckily it doesn't reach the ears of the Irish manager who has read that Figo is a gay icon in Spain and just can't afford to have the same status in Barnsley.

Much more important than all of this is the nitty gritty of the football. Their goal, which looked like an inexpensive header granted to the rampantly heterosexual Luis Figo, arrived at a time when the Irish were in a state of some flux.

"Yeah, the goal came as we were trying to get Gary Doherty on. I went to 4-3-3 after we scored . . . I sent on information not to go 4-5-1, I didn't want to sit back. `Whatever you do don't sit back,' were the words, but it happens. They were having a good bit of pressure but if we'd escaped that, got away with it, we'd have been okay. I'd changed it earlier (Niall Quinn coming off minutes beforehand) because I thought we were just sitting back. Maybe that sent a negative response to players which wasn't intended . . . Did they score because I went 4-3-3 or because the best player in the world snuck in?"

With a toothsome wind favouring the visitors in the first half, he had gone into the break knowing that his team would be a different proposition in the second half. He'd also gone in knowing that Roy Keane won't be getting on the plane to Estonia this morning (which rather makes the king size seats a futile gesture).

"Having Roy in September (for the game against the Netherlands) might be the lesser of two evils. He was unbelievable this afternoon. Magnificent. We'll just have to play without him. There's that and Gary Breen gone. Apart from that life's just a bed of roses."

The questions keep coming. Would he have done this if he'd known that? What about if this had happened and that hadn't? McCarthy is becoming exasperated.

"Look," he says, "These are things I can't do anything about." He pauses. "Where is it?" he says, and pats his breast pocket. "Ah."

He begins reading from the piece of card he has just fished out. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

He rises and heads for the door, the sun is setting in a blaze of almost celestial light and a bluebird lights gently on his shoulder. As we are hushed in wonder the birdsong is strengthened by a choir of angels and cherry blossoms begin falling like snow.

"That's not true, is it, that thing about Figo?" says somebody. "About him being gay?"