Kerr hopes to promote change with success

The Cypriot leg of the Irish Youth team's celebrations finally started to wind down in the not-so-early hours of yesterday morning, but Brian Kerr and his players will have a few more hands to shake yet.

As soon as the last of the players return to Dublin this morning, Kerr is hoping to get down to the next item on his agenda - trying to ensure that the positive effects of his teams' remarkable success over the past three months are as widespread as possible.

The former St Patrick's Athletic boss has made it known on several occasions over the past week that he sees an urgent need to internationalise the thinking at all levels of the sport in this country. And he knows that Ireland's achievement of becoming the first country to win the European Under-16 and Youths titles in one year is likely to open doors for our coaches at the highest levels of the world game.

"We've made a lot of contacts here, spoken to a lot of coaches and obviously we'll be looking to follow that up over the months ahead," Kerr said yesterday. "The aim will be to look at what people are doing in other countries, particularly in areas like the training of coaches, and then see what we can usefully apply back home.

"We still have a long way to go in some ways. If you look at the Danes, they had 22 coaches from first division clubs here watching games and doing technical reports on the other sides. You have to work within your budgets and that probably cost them more than a thousand pounds but I'd say it was money well-spent."

Kerr said the other benefit of the two successes would be that it might keep youngsters in the game.

"Basically we're all fighting for the same bunch of kids and what we have over some of the other sports is the international element," he said. "Hopefully there'll have been kids back home who read about and then watched this tournament who'll think, `Hey, I could end up playing in something like that'. For the players themselves, there is also the confidence that beating the traditional European soccer powers in major finals generates.

"What happened with this team is that they won so many games that eventually they start to think they're a little bit invincible. If they can carry a little bit of that with them into the senior game, then it'll be good for them in the years ahead."

In exchange for letting Irish officials in on the latest technical and tactical advances in football, there will doubtless be quite a few overseas counterparts looking for pointers on how to develop the team spirit that the Irish displayed.

Former Scotland manager Andy Roxbrough, now a central figure within UEFA's coaching structures, was certainly impressed. He told the Irish party at a post-final reception that the only two occasions on which football had reduced him to tears were Scotland's victory in this event in 1992 and, after a week of seeing the players together on and off the pitch, Ireland's on Sunday.

A number of the players paid emotional tributes, with Liam George, scorer of the penalty that wrapped up the win over Germany, thanking "everybody in the squad for making me feel so much at home since I joined up with them".

"This has been the best time of my life and it's been a great honour to be part of this team, not just here, but since I was first selected to play for Ireland," he said. Goalkeeper Alex O'Reilly, the only other English-born player on the panel, echoed George's sentiments while marvelling at how far his international career has come in a few short months. Kerr initially passed over O'Reilly after watching him play disappointingly in a reserve game at West Ham, before Ian Evans selected him for the Under-21 side.

"It's amazing to me that only a little while ago I wasn't playing for Ireland and now here I am, involved in something like this," O'Reilly said. "It's just been brilliant for me to be a part of it."

The team, which will next make an assault on the World Championship in Nigeria next April, will now split up, with almost all of them taking short breaks before returning to their clubs. Like the Under-16s, it is hoped to get them together again for a senior international match, probably against Malta in September, where they are to be presented to the crowd at half-time.

They will not have any more competitive games between now and the World Championship, although six of the squad are eligible for the next Under-18 team, which will play its qualifying matches for next summer's finals in Sweden in early October. The matches are against Russia, Poland and Cyprus.