Dream start must yield to reality

First of all it's important to make it clear, as Mick McCarthy did himself in his post match press conference, that we shouldn't get too carried away with Saturday's win. Nevertheless, this was a good victory, a very good one, and the Irish manager is entitled to enjoy the next month because he hasn't always enjoyed the best of fortune since taking over this job.

McCarthy said all along that his best team would provide formidable challenge for just about anybody and there's little question that this was pretty close to his first choice 11. Niall Quinn and Gary Kelly might well have started on Saturday had they not been ruled out by injury but, in the circumstances, their loss wasn't considered to be that severe a blow.

The players that played in their places, Jason McAteer and, effectively, Tony Cascarino, did well enough and the shape of the team, the balance between youth and experience were all much improved on just about all our outings in the World cup qualifiers.

It was also, unquestionably, an opportune time to play the Croatians. Miroslav Blazevic might have taken it a little too much for granted after the game that his side would not have lost had they had the likes of Alen Boksic and Davor Suker with them in Dublin but there is no doubt that the loss of almost half a dozen first choice players must have taken its toll.

First of all, the visitors would surely have threatened more had their best striker been in town. As it was they had precious few clear-cut chances on goal and what attempts they did have, the best two of which fell to Igor Pamic, were very poorly finished.

Secondly, on a psychological level, the absence of players of the class of Suker, Boksic and Robert Prosinecki will have had a considerable effect on the confidence of those players who did travel. Quite aside from the fact that the Croatians were trying to raise their game again for the first time since finishing third in France, the players in Saturday's squad will have looked around the dressing room in Lansdowne Road before going out onto the pitch and thought to themselves, "well, this is going to be tougher than it should be".

Throw in an Irish goal after a couple of minutes and Blazevic must have known his men were going to have to play very well to come out of the game with anything useful. His confidence can hardly have been helped by the fact that from the time Denis Irwin's penalty went in, the crowd really started to get behind the Irish team and the their feeling that we were going to win this game seemed to be picked up by the players who appeared to steadily grow in confidence. If the Croatians had problems with missing players then we were clearly boosted by the return of Roy Keane. The Manchester United skipper was outstanding in the centre of the field but then so was Mark Kinsella. For me, he was probably the real man of the match. The sort of working partnerships that were being operated - Keane and Kinsella, Irwin and McAteer on the right, Steve Staunton and Damien Duff, as well as those up front and at the heart of the defence - all seemed to click.

Cascarino probably came into the game a little too early to be at his most effective because he had to pace himself to last the whole game, when ideally he should be coming on with 20 minutes or so remaining, but McCarthy must have been happy that everything else he was looking for more or less came off.

I would, perhaps, still have a problem with Phil Babb at the heart of defence because, while he undoubtedly gives you the sort of pace that you need against a side like Croatia, he seems to make a serious error every time I see him play there for club or country. On Saturday, he made two and got away with both but the fact is that you can never tell when his luck is going to run out.

If things had gone particularly badly for him in this game it could have ended up being 2-2. However, if Robbie Keane had still been on the pitch after the two Croatian sendings-off then we might have gone on to win by a couple more goals. It's a very solid start to our campaign and one that will generate confidence within the whole camp. A point in Belgrade now and we'll have done very nicely in what looked to be a very tough opening to the group. That may well be the way McCarthy looks at the situation when he selects his side for that game. We may well see him play five across the midfield with Lee Carsley joining Keane and Kinsella in the centre. A lot, of course, will depend on who he has to pick from. We've seen now, as he said we would, what he can do with his first choice team but that unfortunately is not really what the bread and butter of international management is about. It's about making the most of what's available to you and hammering out the required results when things aren't going your way.

The reality is that this team is unlikely to get to play together for more than half of the forthcoming qualifiers. McCarthy is likely to have to patch teams together in just the way he had to do in the last campaign and it's then that we will see how much things have really improved. He's likely have a nervous wait by the telephone in the build up to the next two games but, for now, he can put his feet up and reflect with some satisfaction on a job well done.

(In an interview with Emmet Malone)