McCarthy starts to enjoy himself

Two days into their stay here at Chiba city - a rather remote Milton Keynes-style new town suburb of Tokyo, much of which has been built on land reclaimed from the sea - and it seemed the Irish squad would be getting a chance to rest up after the weekend's game and what has been a fairly hectic travel schedule.

But the wheel comes spinning back around before you know it at these World Cup finals and so, after a busy morning training session at the Inage sports centre, where a few hundred Irish and local supporters looked on, it was getting close to being time for everyone to shut up shop again.

By this morning, the squad were back on the road, heading for Ibaraki, despite considerable confusion over their travel arrangements after it emerged that the journey to tomorrow's venue was much longer then had been expected.

A goal-happy German side awaits them, one that now needs just a win tomorrow to be sure of their place in the second round.

At yesterday's press conference, the opposition's media paid a visit, anxious to gauge Mick McCarthy's view of a team that had taken to surprising everybody of late.

One observer describes them as the "new Irish" - long on team spirit, short on technical ability - but the Irish, new or old, have rarely been cruel enough to punish weakness quite as ruthlessly as Rudi Völler's side did at the weekend.

Having apologised in advance for his English, one reporter asked whether McCarthy had been "astonished by Germany's performance against Saudi Arabia"?

"I was astonished by Saudi Arabia's performance against Germany," replied the Irish boss dryly before taking care to make all the right noises about the how well Völler's team must have performed to achieve such a huge win.

"The bottom line, though," said McCarthy, "is that they will get all the respect from us for being the German national team between now and the time of the game. Once the ball is kicked off then there'll be no respect at all."

McCarthy, however, was clearly unimpressed by the Saudi effort at containing a German side that played its aerial strength for all it was worth on Saturday.

Though he is only due to watch the game in its entirety today he observed after seeing the goals that, "there were very few competitive tackles going in there. What was there? Six goals or something from crosses. The marking wasn't as good as it should have been, that's for sure."

His own side, he admitted, might have problems coping with such powerful attacking players around the box, but, he insisted, there are ways of dealing with such things.

"I can't stretch my players or put all the big ones on so that we can cope at set pieces and anyway, Cameroon had some big players, I seem to remember, and we defended very well against them.

"What you do is to look for people to take some responsibility," he added. "If somebody's bigger than you and you're not going to beat him in a fair jump then stop him jumping, it happens all the time.

"Use your physical presence. Don't let him head it. And if he does head it then make sure he has a face full of dandruff when he heads it."

Asked about injuries, McCarthy again maintained that everybody, including Shay Given, Steve Finnan and Gary Breen, none of whom played a full part in training yesterday, will be fit for tomorrow's game.

An attempt was then made to nudge McCarthy into giving an indication of whether Finnan would be rewarded for his second-half showing on Saturday with a return to the starting line up.

"It's just that it's a quiet Monday," replied the reporter, prompting a mock tirade from McCarthy. "Listen," he bellowed, "I've provided two weeks of absolute bliss for you guys . . . shall I send Stan home now to give you something to write about?"

Then, through the laughter, he offered a sarcastic apology for the "quiet Monday", before adding more softly and sincerely: "Me? I'm finally enjoying myself."