Where it all went wrong Tom Humphries Mick McCarthy will say that the media were lurking like squid waiting to pull him under. Given the nature of the final struggle he will probably believe that, too. He's wrong though. He's looking in the wrong direction.

At critical times Mick McCarthy made bad choices: not just in terms of how he handled players, in terms of the players he picked, in terms of the back-up systems around him and in terms of when he packed in the Irish job. Too many bad choices. Too much undertow.

Character is fate. Mick McCarthy was born to be a manager. Right now Mick McCarthy is not a bad manager. Losing two games this autumn didn't make him a bad manager. Losing Roy Keane didn't make him a bad manager. It's just that the connection between a lot of decisions made his job unsustainable and he couldn't see it. The failings of a lot of the people around him made his life increasingly difficult and he couldn't see it. Couldn't. Wouldn't. Character.

Character. Mick thought that life was about loyalty. He thought that it was about being inside the tent peeing out or outside the tent peeing in, or whatever. He thought it was about making rules and sticking with them. Life as a manager is far more complex, though.

Let us go through the by now familiar litany, the final painting of the sins on the forehead of the recently departed. He was still apprenticed to his trade when he got the Irish job, and whether out of generosity or necessity the FAI permitted him to earn his management chops on the job. In the view of most people he was an apt pupil. He did well, sweeping up the beaten dockets of the Charlton era and producing a team which fitted his own vision.

An understanding of what he was attempting to do was necessary if you were to forgive successive disasters in Macedonia, or the insipid nature of our play-off exit to Turkey. People understood. People forgave. There was the palliative of promise. Finally, we got through a World Cup qualifying campaign.

McCarthy's demeanour from the time of qualifying onwards was always a little odd. He was intent, as he often put it, on enjoying his World Cup. No doubt about it, his intent was to go to Japan/South Korea and do well, but a part of his psyche saw the World Cup as his reward for years of toiling in the vineyard. By the time he got to Saipan, a downright bad choice of preparatory venue in the first place, most of the seeds for his downfall had unwittingly been sown.

By then Manchester United had suffered a bad season. By then Roy Keane had been hung out to dry by the communications debacle surrounding the Niall Quinn testimonial. By then Keane had been asked to play a friendly against Nigeria on the night before a 23-hour plane trip. By then, extraordinarily, McCarthy had appointed as his Boswell Cathal Dervan, who once urged Lansdowne Road fans to vocalise their displeasure at the Irish captain.

McCarthy is a fair man though. He treats all players the same. Including Keane, who needed a little more.

The series of tripwires which the team then stumbled through is well-known. Bad pitch. No balls. No drink. Gear problems. Poor FAI support. Bad communications. And an unhappy star. The accelerating sense of disenchantment between Keane and McCarthy, which, critically, the manager seems to have had no real sense of, became the central theme of the World Cup preparations.

McCarthy's banal World Cup diary offers no real answers to the critical question of what he realistically hoped could be achieved by confronting Keane with his Irish Times interview in front of players and staff, as opposed to dealing with the matter in private as had been done for most of that week. It gives no suggestion that getting an obviously unhappy player onto the pitch in Niigata for our first game was the manager's most pressing priority.

Thus the worst and most critical week of McCarthy's life began in that restaurant in Saipan. Things move forward in a blur. The extraordinary decision to summon the press within minutes of Keane storming out. The intransigence and at times belligerence which followed; none of it spoke well of McCarthy's grasp of the bigger picture. None of it suggested that he appreciated that getting to the World Cup was an achievement of symbiosis, best player and manager looking after their own patches.

As the days went on it became clear that neither McCarthy nor Keane was learning anything. In Keane, the failure to learn was one thing. The World Cup would be one long, excruciating punishment for Keane.

In McCarthy, a well-paid manager of men, it was critical. It became apparent that he didn't see it as his job to put the best Irish team possible onto the pitch, but rather to get the best possible out of those he put on the pitch. It didn't add up to the same thing. Still doesn't.

The World Cup was jolly enough while it lasted. McCarthy's team mixed the good with the bad, his talent for stirring the spirit of ordinary players saw to it that bizarre selectorial decisions were masked by gallant displays and late goals and ultimately an exit from which most people extracted whatever moral lesson they wanted.

McCarthy saw it as a "highly succesful" World Cup. Most of us saw it as highly enjoyable, highly eventful. As time passed the sweet flavour dissipated quickly.

Mick McCarthy had two options in late June when he bounded off the stage in the Phoenix Park. He could resign with his stock high, especially among the English media who have lauded McCarthy to the same extent as they have reviled Keane. He could resign and get back to the beloved world of training grounds and daily routines.

Or he could stay and reach out a hand to Keane. He could say mistakes have been made, Roy Keane has suffered, I have suffered, he's a great, great player, I want him in my squad. Whether Keane responded, the ball was in Keane's court. McCarthy would have the moral high ground.

Instead he took a third road. He convinced himself that Irish soccer could get by without Keane. He took a team to Helsinki and thrashed the locals and he was more convinced than ever. This would be a Mick team. No arguments. No lone wolves.

So with Quinn gone, Staunton gone, Keane unforgiven, Duff out of position, Harte out of form and Kilbane a bundle of jitters, we set about our business. Kenny Cunningham, quiet, self-effacing Kenny Cunningham, was given the captaincy of what, minus Keane, is a pretty meek team anyway. It was hard to tell if McCarthy was making a point about the Keane captaincy being over-rated or if he was just cementing a favoured player at centre back despite the claims of younger, better players. Either way, it was perverse.

Two losses followed, the second preceded by the "Great Sunderland Farce" where McCarthy's ghostwriter did him the favour of publicly talking him up for a job which he had no hope of getting and McCarthy significantly made no serious attempt at applying a muzzle. By the time an insipid Irish side lost at home to Switzerland it was little wonder (little credit either, but that's another matter) that the Lansdowne Road crowd were belching disapproval.

For all the talk about newspaper vendettas and for all McCarthy's singling out of the Irish media as being psychopathically agin him, poor Mick McCarthy willingly went down every wrong alley on his own. After Saipan all he had left to bargain with were results, and when they started to go awry, well, McCarthy was done. Character. Fate.

The sadness of it is that it was all so unnecessary. McCarthy will walk away from his dream job with bitterness in his heart. Within months of what should have been a fine, happy achievement he will go bouncing out onto the job market blaming all the usual suspects for his downfall.

It's a pity. He's a fine and decent man who talks often and passionately about loyalty but who has never truly known who his friends are. He's an honest man who thinks that making hard and fast rules and living by them should be enough. His job required endless flexibility. He gave stern Yorkshire rigidity.

He should be remembered with gratitude for bringing the side through a difficult transition and leaving the Irish game in a better state than he found it. He mistimed his exit, but a lot of people got a lot of things wrong this year.

Overall: ... P68 W29 D20 L19 F114 A64

Competitive: ... P40 W19 D13 L8 F73 A33

The campaigns

France 98 ... P12 W5 D4 L3 F24 A11

Ireland finished second in their group, 10 points behind Romania and one ahead of Lithuania. Went on to lose play-off to Belgium 3-2 on aggregate.

Euro 2000 ... P10 W5 D3 L 2 F15 A7

Ireland finished second in group, one point behind Yugoslavia and one ahead of Croatia. Went on to lose play-off to Turkey on away goals after 1-1 draw in Dublin.

Japan/Korea 2002 ... P16 W9 D6 L1 F31 A9*

Ireland finished second in group, level on 24 points with Portugal and four ahead of Holland. Went on to beat Iran 2-1 on aggregate in play-off.

Biggest wins in competitive games:

August 31st, 1996 (Vaduz): Liechtenstein 0 Rep of Ireland 5 (Townsend, Harte, Niall Quinn 2, O'Neill)

May 21st, 1997 (Lansdowne Road): Rep of Ireland 5 Liechtenstein 0 (Connolly 3, Cascarino 2)

October 14th, 1998 (Lansdowne Road): Rep of Ireland 5 Malta 0 (Robbie Keane 2, Roy Keane, Niall Quinn, Breen)

Worst defeat in a competitive game:

September 7th, 2002 (Moscow): Russia 4 Rep of Ireland 2 (Doherty, Morrison)

* Spain game in second round of finals officially counts as a draw.