Weekend ills are salved by the Honey Monster Rag Reaction

INTERNATIONAL FRIENDLY/Reaction: Late in the evening, nobody left in the joint. Blue smoke. The smell of stale everything. Time to wipe the counters, start again. There's an old guy on the piano, playing softly.

That tune. The Party's Over. Rain slanting down outside. We've had our fun but it's a bad night. And then Then, somebody is thumping the ivory. Waking the dead. It's the Honey Monster Rag. The Big Boy Stomp. Boom Boom Boom Let Me Here You Say Dunney! The least elegant goal ever scored in Lansdowne Road saves Brian Kerr's unbeaten record. The Greener Lives. Success breeds noise. The place is rocking. Optimism triumphs over skill.

Ah! For a minute, almost literally a minute, it looked as if Richard Dunne was going to carry the ball over the Turkish endline diving like a second-row forward into their forbidden territory. Instead, he raised his leg, no mean piece of engineering given the confined space, and hoofed to the net. Goooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaalll!!!!!!! A thing of beauty. A joy forever.

Brian Kerr slipped into the mood. He likes these evenings, every little drama amplified till a match which should have been nothing becomes something as big as a rollercoaster. It ended with jigs and hugs on the sidelines. "It was very entertaining. Open. They're a good side, we did well to stay up with them. We drew two-all with a team that finished third in the world last year. We had changes, they had their best team. We went ahead. We conceded. We came back."

Perhaps his side got their performances mixed up. Saturday's flavourless draught would have done fine for a modest occasion like last night. On Saturday, we could have used some of the fizzy carbonated football we got last night.

"The front players did well tonight. David is going well scoring for his club, he had an excellent game tonight. We know he can do that. I've seen him in club football, he's done that a lot. I'm not surprised. If you look back he has a good record in international football." And the run is still intact. Unbeaten still, even if it takes Richard Dunne a suspected handball and a thumper from two yards deep in injury time. He grins.

"It's nice that the players have the passion desire and commitment to stay at it. I was disappointed in Saturday. It was a strange build-up to this game. We played a game that really mattered and then a friendly. There was an air of annoyance out of Saturday and I wondered how it would affect us."

The game and it's good vibrations are still with him. He's seemed tense over the past week, more tense as the first bad reviews of his tenure rolled in. This was a breathing space. Between it and Saturday he has things to learn.

"I have to look at it. Midfield as a unit worked very hard. Damien's goal seemed like a fair goal. Great ball in from Colin . . . I thought we worked really really hard."

And speaking of Damien Duff? "Damien was tired and felt a little tired in the calf muscles. He had a hard game on Saturday so I didn't want to risk him."

Where to play him? "He's a handy player. (Grins). It depends on who we have for a particular match, where to put him in to fit the particular balance. We played him in different places in games as a youth player and he understands different positions."

Lansdowne Road was alive again last night. We ate the world's biggest humble pie, served to us by David Connolly who used to be yesterday's man. We thrilled to the comedy stylings of Omer Catkic, the reserve Turkish goalie. We looked closely at Colin Healy wondering if he was the same Colin Healy who was here on Saturday. Saturday. The Russians. It seemed so far away.

For Kerr, though, the high-wire stuff resumes this evening when he gets off a jet in Moscow. "Nervous? I'm used to going to matches that I want a certain result from. It's a strange situation going to a match hoping for a particular result. Sometimes you feel you are better off not being there just hearing the result afterwards. This time there's a lot I can learn. I know what I'm going for. Going to watch Switzerland, that's all we're concerned with in the short term."

The Turkish view was delivered solemnly and politely by the urbane Senol Gunes. A man who has achieved as much as Gunes shouldn't have to look so worried all the time. Having got Turkey to the semi-finals of the World Cup last year, he should be sitting on a river bank fishing, wondering when he'll amble home to his handmaidens. Instead, he looks wrought. The addict's haunted look.

"Everything was perfect for football. It was a good atmosphere for a good football match. We would have liked to have won but the result was fair, what both teams deserved. In the first half we controlled the game and conceded a goal, we seemed to control and pass a lot, we didn't push the ball forward. What we aimed to achieve was to see how our players perform against the British style of football. I was pleased except for a few individual mistakes." Which led to the question.

Those reserve goalkeepers of yours, is your heart set on them? And he looks at us awkwardly, just the start of a smile on his lips. Goes for the formulation relied on by housebuyers down through the ages. He has another few to see before he decides.