THE road to France at first seemed paved with cobblestones and maybe one major stumbling block in the shape of Romania. Now, suddenly, it's all uphill and the team, like its manager, is at a crossroads.

It should never have come to this. In the opening salvos it wasn't even a match. Macedonia are not a particularly good team and the Irish were in cruise control, establishing a platform quicker than Romania had done when winning 1-0 here.

No doubt the near capitulation which followed will be grist to the mill to the critics of McCarthy and the 3-5-2 system. But there had been nothing wrong with the system as Ireland grabbed hold of the game by the scruff of the neck early on. And in some respects what more can a manager do than prepare his team to do that?

The Macedonians weren't picking up the midfield runs by Alan McLoughlin (even before he scored) or Roy Keane. The home side looked naive, defensively, never more so than when Stojkovski passed straight to Keane in the build up to the opener.

By controlling the ball, the boys in orange had been keeping the home crowd quiet. Gradually they let it go. Four or five passes went astray, they sat deeper and played it longer. Weaknesses were exposed. Terry Phelan was over committing himself and thus leaving himself easy prey to one twos by Vlatko Gosev.

Ireland payed the inevitable penalty, figuratively as well as literally. Where before there had been movement aplenty, the Irish ball carrier didn't appear to have anybody to pass to. Admittedly, if the first penalty was harsh, the second was sadistic. But, one up and cruising, no team should let the opposition back in at any level. It was as unprofessional as it was unforgiveable, and was summed up in some respects by Jason McAteer's dismissal.

McAteer can make all the excuses he wants, and did. True, the Italian referee was typical of his breed in pointing a mite too readily to the spot. But though McAteer felt he had merely been trying to pull his feet away from under Stojkovski's provocative stance, his actions still didn't look too clever on television replays. More pertinently, those actions were indicative of an increasingly sullen and sulky display.

The lack of mobility had become most obvious up front. Tony Cascarino had fulfilled his aerial threat when supplied, but thereafter he wasn't. So his lack of match practice with Nancy since the turn of the year became apparent. Not alone that, but the Macedonian defenders were beginning to carry the ball out from defence with ease.

If McCarthy was annoyed by all of this, he'll have been livid as the cracks almost became a capitulation. Moving the ball in simply and quickly is the team's motto. Instead we had the uncharacteristic sight of McLoughlin needlessly dispossessed when attempting to beat a man in midfield, and another Irish attack became a Macedonian counter attack.

It was a harsh penalty against Phelan but, with shades of the first one, it came about because Gosev had initially played another one two to get in behind him again.

Faced by his most difficult interval team talk in his time as Irish manager, McCarthy set about rectifying matters. Cascarino, and then Phelan, were identified as the two prime weak links in the chain. Harte's slip therefore in the build up to the third goal was unfortunate.

Now the Irish were, ominously, facing another blanket defence as was the case against Iceland, this one though fired up and at home. Vlatko Gosev's midfield indulgence in trying to yank Steve Staunton's chain, as it were, led to the escape clause that was Dave Kelly's goal. But this game had long since been tossed away, and no one knew it better than the Irish players.

Cascarino had been first to wander out of the dressing room and candidly analysed the team's wasteful performance. "I felt we went 1-0 up and thought: `oh well this is going to be an easy day's work.' If we'd kept going at them and getting the ball in we might have got a second and the game would have been dead."

Showered and sidelined for the second hall, Cascarino had been straining to retrieve any ball that came his way and straining his neck muscles as the Irish peppered the Macedonian area in the air. There was an irony in that.

"I didn't think I played badly. I was a bit surprised. But maybe it was a tactical thing, I don't know. There were ways to get goals by crosses and that's how we got the first-score. If you get decent balls in, like we proved in Lansdowne we can get goals from crosses. I was a bit disappointed."

Andy Townsend concurred that the team had committed the sin of sitting too deeply in the first half. "You want to kill the game off but sometimes there's no better way of killing a game off than going and getting another two. We're all disappointed and it's an uphill road from now on."

Amid the pervading anger over the two penalties, and the second one especially, what galled him, and will surely have galled his teammates, is that an unexceptional Macedonian team hadn't forced their way back into the match - they were let back into it.

"They're not a good team, it has to be said. But they're typical of this neck of the woods. If you give them a little bit of joy, all of a sudden they're all up for it," he said.

Pinpointing the recurring Irish problem in breaking down deep lying, mass defences, Townsend added: "They weren't in it, and in the end they made it very difficult for us, as other teams have done in the past, because they sit back and don't offer us any space in behind them. Then half the time all we resorted to was a hopeful ball really and it became very frustrating. But two penalties like that really, really hurts.

"It's a major, major blow because it brings them right back into contention in the group. It means we really need to beat Romania. We've made it bloody hard for ourselves now.

Townsend couldn't recall Ireland ever relinquishing such a vice like hold on a game. Steve Staunton said it was the worst defeat he'd known, worse than the draw with Liechtenstein. Alan Kelly admitted it was one of the worst.

"Having gone 1-0 up after eight/nine minutes, it looked like it was going to be a walk in the park for us. We shot ourselves in the foot really. We didn't play well and I think everybody has got to own up and accept that." Meantime, up from the dressing room and long after the players had departed, Mick McCarthy was candidly fielding questions at the front of the upper tier, he would examine the video, examine his managerial beliefs for this team, and assess whether he would retain the 3-5-2 system.

A crossroads.

. Craig Brown told the Tartan Army to cool it last night even though the World Cup finals in France are looming into view.

Blackburn midfielder Kevin Gallacher scored both goals in a 2-0 victory at Parkhead against Austria that sends Scotland seven points clear at the top of European group four.

Although their rivals have games in hand it is a huge advantage and Brown's boys now look favourites to gain the one automatic place.

But he said: "There is still a bit of work to do. Austria still have to play Sweden and I wouldn't count them out yet.

"The Austrian team tonight had a lot of German players who play in Germany, but we beat them at their own game."