Ringmaster McCarthy cracks a gentle whip

After the winter break, back to the unquestioned routine of away games. The team assemble in the cool, marble lobby of their hotel and depart for training. For the next half hour, journalists wander into the lobby, bumping into each other, and asking if the team have gone training. Yes they have. At this point, most become dispirited and go back to their half-lit rooms.

The photographers have gone to training of course, in case there's a homicide or a punch-up. Typically, a handful of reporters will decide to follow their example. There is a routine to this, too. Pile into a taxi and say the words "football training ground" very loudly. Allow oneself to be driven to various local grounds, starting at the nearest and ending up in the border regions. View local grounds and sigh in unison: "Now that's the sort of thing the FAI should be building."

The team have lathered up a good sweat by the time the disoriented hacks arrive. The morning sun has prodded the heat into the mid-20s. The sidelines of the surprisingly lush little pitch are decorated not just with water bottles, but with enough sunblock to end the concept of tanning forever.

Mick McCarthy is in his element, of course. Every day brings the possibility of bad news from home about his ailing dad, but if McCarthy ever looks truly untroubled, it's out on the training ground on these away trips when the little one-touch games get frantic and the banter is flying. He stands in the middle, ringmaster of it all, and you realise what a difference it makes that this team is irrefutably and, finally, his team.

He has a little tampering to do this week. The side which brought such startling glory home from Amsterdam and Lisbon has necessarily been disrupted. Kenny Cunningham is back looking for work. Niall Quinn and Steve Carr are having repairs done. Alan Kelly is in the eye of a storm full of glamorous transfer rumours, but he's also been doing splinter duty on the bench at Blackburn. Debate centres on McCarthy's character. He likes continuity. He likes change. He likes Kenny. He likes a big man. He likes this and he likes that. McCarthy sets the team to an interesting exercise - five players running with the ball at a flat back four. The five select themselves from the herd of players.

McCarthy orders Ian Harte, Richard Dunne, Gary Breen and Gary Kelly into the line as the back four. Some people feel that Breen and Dunne are one comical error away from disaster. Others feel that McCarthy will let them make that error before reintroducing Kenny Cunningham. Whatever, he refits the back four again and again over the next half hour. Any takers for Steve Finnan? C'mon down Gary Doherty. Curtis Fleming, how have you been old pal?

Little in terms of clues up front. Doherty gets his turn as the traditional lighthouse for whom distressed midfielders must aim, but there are longer spells when Dave Connolly flits and darts in the shadows of Robbie Keane. Keane's confidence is an imperishable commodity which makes everyone else look fretful. When he scores, he exults unselfconsciously with a kid's exuberance. Everyone else looks like they have kids to feed and bills to pay. They set up the posts for an end of session game. "Send us over a goalkeeper, Packie," bawls McCarthy to the corner of the pitch where Packie Bonner has been putting Shay Given, Nicky Colgan and Alan Kelly through the sort of commandostyle course of exercises that gentle goalkeepers do. Kelly heads off for the fun. "Aw no," shouts McCarthy, "not Kells."

Kelly turns to go back to the grindstone with Bonner. McCarthy bawls with laughter. "Winding you up, mate."

Those of us who watch training regularly reckon we have just seen an example of the football conversation genre known as banter. We reckon the banter must have Manchester United as its subtext.

There is debate, secondary debate, as to whether or not Damien Duff will squeeze his way into one of the wing spots. Duff is one of those who found himself in the shadows while Robbie Keane eclipsed everyone with his extraordinary rise. For many Duff has as much to offer, he just needs to work out the best way of delivering it. This morning he is beautiful to watch as he weaves his way in and out of the practice game, his fair head and trademark slouched run making little bits of wonderment down either flank.

Duff has some devil in his football. His rivals on the wings all look stately by comparison. Since his sprightly debut against the Czech Republic in Olomouc three years ago, his backers have been waiting for him to take a game by the scruff of the neck and transform it with his magic feet, like he does for Blackburn.

The time is coming. Duff is different this morning. Bigger and less diffident than he was last season. McCarthy alludes to the changes in him afterwards.

"He used to just come on with his bag of tricks, but now he's changed, he thinks about things. He's got a bit more strength and awareness and he still has all those tricks he can use. He's been unlucky really. Robbie's progress has been so extraordinary, he just arrived and, wallop, he makes everyone else look slow, but we should be grateful to have two players like them. Damien is a terrific player and I could see it in him this morning, he's a more clever player than he was."

The session is winding down. Kenny Cunningham comes to the shade of the little lean-to at the side of the pitch and straps a bag of ice to his left knee. Routine stuff. Cunningham has a decent streak a mile wide. If anyone has the skinny on the Manchester United goalkeeping vacancy, it will be him.

"What," he says "who's Alan Kelly."

The keeper?

"Our 'keeper? Oh, Kells."

Yeah.

"To United. Like Manchester United?"

Yeah.

"First I've heard of it," he says, superfluously.

The team are on their bus, Kenny's leg is strapped. The first bad news of the week is about to reach Alan Kelly. Otherwise nothing but blue skies.