McCarthy accentuates the positive

Bad day? As it turns out it never happened. The Irish squad and management left Lansdowne Road last night humming a happy tune, confounding all the know-nothings who thought that a scoreless draw at home to Lithuania late in a difficult World Cup qualifying campaign might be, well, very disappointing. Down in the little band room, where the two rival managers traditionally dish out their post-match thoughts, we listened to Benjaminas Zelkevicius happily chew the cud about the state of Lithuanian football.

Benjaminas was quietly thrilled with his team's performance. He recognised proudly that it would be welcomed as a coup in Lithuania and expressed the view that his side were right in there in the scrape for second place in the group. Happy thoughts filtered through a translator. She looked pretty happy, too.

Experience of press conferences after nil-all draws tells us that if the away manager is happy to have got out with a point, the home manager will usually be disappointed.

Not so. Not anymore.

Enter Mick McCarthy, wearing a black suit, but a happy face to match his bright silk tie. No thunder clouds. No furrowed eyebrows.

Mystifying. At best Mick McCarthy seems cursed to narrow failure in circumstances which everyone agrees are promising. At worst his team looks short on ideas and long on enthusiasm. "The result was disappointing," said Mick, "but everything else I was very pleased with. Only the result disappointed me. Everything else? Well I thought we played exceptionally well. Created enough chances to win three games."

In the band room we are getting the feel of the game. After a slow start we are becoming accustomed to the pace.

"Do you think Lithuania were negative by defending totally," asks somebody, implicitly suggesting unsporting tactics. "What's your opinion."

"It's an understatement," said Mick McCarthy. "My opinion is that they were always going to be that way. My opinion is that they tried to catch us on the break and they are not bad at it. They won't play like that in Lithuania."

Perhaps, after last night, they might just play like that in Lithuania. There are no rules which tell them they can't. Against an Irish team which has dropped a point to every team in the group except Liechtenstein, they might just fancy their chances.

With three games left and two of them away from home, France is beginning to look a lot further away in soccer terms than it does in geographical terms. Romania are home and dry. Macedonia, with just two games left (both against Lithuania), scored two goals against Romania last night and if they win twice they leave Ireland needing to win three times. From where we stand that is a pretty steep incline.

Back in the band room, we aren't conducting the post mortem we had planned four. We are reminiscing. We are accentuating the positive, eliminating the negative, not messing with Mr In Between.

"The number 11 was playing off the front," says Mick, "the little guy was causing us problems, but we were playing too deep. Once we sorted that out and squeezed the pitch we got to grips with it. They didn't cause a problem after that.

"They will attack more in Vilnius. They started well, they had their tails up and we pushed them back and you have to credit our team for doing that. They brought the number 14 on to stop us getting down the left side constantly. Mark (Kennedy) moved across, but I think we still made runs down that wing."

A question comes about McCarthy's formation. Fluidity of same. Formations come about through force of expediency.

"I don't have a formation," says McCarthy. "You want to pigeonhole me and say that's McCarthy's formation. My formations are always scuppered by injuries and suspensions. I play according to what I've got."

Back to the future. The business of the evening after all is World Cup qualification and Ireland have advanced their cause only marginally. Certainly there are good and happy vibes emanating from the dressingroom and the number of chances created is being treated as a significant statistic, but the only statistics which matter are on the little league table for the group.

"We have to keep winning games and setting targets," says McCarthy. "I said we have to win three games and as far as I'm aware we still have three games left to play. I know Macedonia lost so we are two points behind. They have to play Lithuania twice. The fact that they scored two goals against Romania will do them a favour in the final shake-up though. We have to win three games."

Having failed to beat Lithuania or Iceland at home the hope must now be that Ireland can beat the pair of them away from home in the space of a week and then catch a complacent Romania side napping in the winter.

With a mountain like that to climb you look to the leaders. McCarthy knows this.

"Roy Keane set the standard for us tonight. When we were on our heels he won two tackles in front of our dug out and lifted everyone, the team, the crowd, me. He was brilliant. It was a great performance from Roy. Roy is a sitter, he sits back. Sometimes we vacated that midfield area, but Roy sits and he still managed to get in the box late on. He sits and give license to full backs to get forward."

The same thing happened against Macedonia, someone says.

"Your wrong," says Mccarthy who have been playing competitive is an awkward pause. He expands. "People love being negative. Even before the game people were the nature of a couple of We are still in this competition. Don't let anyone drive the wedge in that we can't do it. I thought it was a good performance. They have run Lithuania of the park tonight. The level of hard work that goes into a performance like that. You don't understand that."

Not too many people were in the market for it last night, but McCarthy's optimism is understandable perhaps. With three games left and two of them hovering imminently in early September there is little point in being down in the mouth. It is the manager's job to pick through the rubble and pick out the positive auguries.

We meet Niall Quinn in the corridors. "It was very fast which I thought it would be, not too disappointed, I didn't think I was having a howler by any means, but the pace took a while to get used to. The longer the game went on it was more hopeful that we'd get a goal. Other results helped us though. It's still in our hands.

"Typical European strong defending. Given the go ahead to play against them again with a few games under my belt, I'd be a lot sharper. Wasn't an easy game for ne of the lads had put a ball over the line we'd all have smiles on our faces.