MICK McCARTHY'S nightmare was refusing to go away as he led the retreat out of Skopje with his World Cup challenge in urgent need of repair.

A little more than 12 hours earlier, FYR Macedonia had shaken the very foundations of the game here by consigning the team in garish orange to a 3-2 defeat. And the pain endured throughout the night.

"I've got a beautiful wife and three lovely children but yes, the world still looks as bleak as ever this morning," he said.

"I kept fidgeting with the teletext, scanning the pages, wanting to be assured that it just didn't happen. But, unfortunately, the loss of those three important points is all too real."

"You try to talk about other things but there's a break and a silence and you know it's still as bad as it was."

McCarthy, a strong man now projecting the image of something less, was handling his hour of trauma with some dignity, but nothing or nobody could minimise the profound disappointment of it all.

In the eternal optimism of the breed, some supporters are already targeting the April 30th appointment with Romania in Bucharest as the start of the road back to robust health, a one off assignment that will cure everything. But McCarthy has been too long on the road, has roots too deeply entwined with the game, to be anything other than cautious.

"In life, you've got to believe that everything is possible but realistically, we're now pitching for second place in the table and the chance of qualifying through one of the play offs," he said.

"I honestly don't know how it all came off the rails so suddenly for us, but I can assure you that some of the things which happened never got anywhere near the match plan.

"We played with passion for just 10 minutes or so, then, for some inexplicable reason relaxed and could never subsequently take the advantage back from the Macedonians.

"Some people say the system is wrong. We had our talk after the game and the players, to a man, shared my view that this is the way the game is going, this is the way we must try and make it work for us.

"As a manager of an international team, you're not in a position to have a go at players, as you might in club football. There you can say your piece and then set about picking it up again the following day. In my present job, I cannot afford to send players away for weeks or months with criticism ringing in their ears but I think we all said our piece with honesty and conviction."

This much was confirmed by the team captain, Andy Townsend who only rarely promised to provide the requisite leadership on the pitch as the game began to slip away from the Irish.

"It's valid to mention that it was the first real post mortem since Mick took over as manager," he said. "The players are angry about the way they played and are genuinely sorry for the manager.

"It's difficult to quantify what went wrong last night. Alan Kelly didn't have a shot all evening. But he ended up picking the ball out of the net three times and being saved by a post on another occasion. The bottom line, however, is that we lost and that's always worrying."

"With the ball being whacked from the back, we never got a touch in midfield after the first 15 minutes. We don't want to go backwards and be accused of hoofing the ball out of defence, butt we've simply got to concentrate and learn how to deliver it."

On Jason McAteer's dismissal in injury time, he said: "I feel sorry for Jason for it's not in his nature to be violent." But, significantly, McCarthy said that after viewing the incident on television, he felt that the player deserved to walk.

McAteer was the third Irish player to be sent off in the new regime, following in the footsteps of Liam Daish and Niall Quinn in America last summer. McCarthy, himself, was banished to the dressing room on the same occasion and the overall effect has been to place the spotlight on the discipline in the team.

That observation does not, of course, sit easily with a perceived lack of passion in the side on Wednesday. But it may be linked with the loss of self belief over the last couple of years as the squad struggled in the infant stages of redevelopment.

It means that McAteer must now serve an automatic one match suspension, but depending on whether the offence is classified as violent play, it could merit an even heavier sanction. Alan McLoughlin is also out of the Romanian game because of two yellow cards. There must also be doubts about the Manchester United pair Denis Irwin and Roy Keane.

United are about to enter the most intensive phase of their season's programme and with a cluster of important fixtures before and after Ireland's journey to Bucharest, there could be problems ahead for both Irwin and Keane.

With McAteer and McLoughlin out, Keane's loss would be a massive blow in midfield for a task, identified by McCarthy from a long way back, as the toughest in Ireland's qualifying programme.

It's not an overly encouraging scenario and in the stampede to criticise Wednesday's performance, it may be prudent to reflect on the limited number of options available to McCarthy.

Whether the recall of people like Paul McGrath and Mark Kennedy, players at opposite ends of the international spectrum, is among them, remains to be seen. But clearly, these are deeply disturbing days for Irish football.