The boy McCarthy done well

End of term and how is the boy McCarthy doing? Well if you had Mick McCarthy's luck you know where you would be. You'd be perched on a wobbly stool in a forlorn early house on the quays ordering chasers and chain-smoking.

The end of season report for Mick McCarthy has to take into account his fortitude in this matter. He doesn't slur his words on his ads for Oki, his eyes don't look bloodshot when he pitches for Penneys. Mine would. Yours would.

It's enough to make you shiver. He has always been frank about the fact that the job to get was the one after the one occupied by the person who came after Jack Charlton. Not just because the morning after the intoxicating success of those times was likely to leave the congregation a bit grouchy, but because Charlton left behind a geriatric ward instead of a squad. He milked his heroes to the end and when Babb, McAteer, and Kelly came along as emissaries of youth, he indulged them like a doting grandfather.

So McCarthy took over, coming into a dressingroom filled mainly with friends, colleagues and national heroes who needed redundancy slips. He got on with that job, unearthing the young players, giving them the crash course of experience that they needed before they could be given their licence as full internationals. He missed out on the World Cup by a goal.

Ian Evans, Ireland's assistant manager, has described the process that McCarthy was involved in as being like a circus act, keeping two plates spinning at once. Success. Team-building. He was doing fine keeping the plates going when Brian Kerr walked into shot riverdancing on the Liffey while juggling skittles.

Shtick another Southern Comfort in dat glass there, would ya? Hic.

McCarthy hasn't got the greasy PR touch which might enable him to slip out of such a situation. He could have gone to the under-16 final to schmooze like Stephen Roche did when Charlie Haughey won the Tour de France. We would have laughed. Maldini didn't go. What's McCarthy doing there? Disgraceful.

So he didn't go. We tut-tutted anyway. He went to the under-18 game against Greece in Tolka park the next week and we in the press box watched to see if he jumped up out of his seat any time Ireland scored or if he just took another swig from that naggin he was carrying in the brown paper bag. Gave him the Norman Tebbit cricket test.

There are whispers that Mick McCarthy and Brian Kerr don't embrace and kiss cheeks every time they meet, the suggestion being that the family is dysfunctional and it's all McCarthy's fault.

That's the price of transition. For 10 years Brian Kerr pickled in a vat of formaldehyde in a lab in UCD while the Irish senior team were cruising the world on an open-top bus. For the rest of us there was nothing more dreary or tedious than to hear of how badly Liam Tuohy and Brian Kerr had been treated.

The disappeared should stay that way. Oh and mop up the floor on the way out ya lousy bleedin heart liberal, we're trying to watch the match here. Take Dave O'Leary when your going by the way.

It doesn't matter if Kerr and McCarthy don't feel strongly enough about each other to explore each other's feminine side. They are both getting on with business.

Mick McCarthy, though, he makes the Kennedy's look bulletproof.

We bang on about his taste in centre halves with specific reference to the case of Ian Harte. Although McCarthy nearly pulled off the neat conjuring trick of turning two full backs into a centre-half partnership, we forget that he had no other choice .

Paul McGrath went under in circumstances which were poignant, but which had they been handled differently would have shredded the manager's authority. Alan Kernaghan was put back in the pond by popular demand. Liam Daish turned out to have a papier mache leg, Phil Babb was wounded or missing for most of the time and McCarthy's investment of faith in Gary Breen came to naught when Breen's confidence disappeared down a divot on a pitch in Macedonia. So McCarthy could either pick himself or hand Ian Harte a rather difficult mission.

And he nearly pulled it off. He had to go into two World Cup play-off games against Belgium without Roy Keane, whose performances in Lithuania and Iceland not long before had been his best in an Irish jersey since the 1994 World Cup.

Then there was Keith O'Neill, 6ft 2in of gangling unpredictability, who was supposed to play alongside David Connolly. Connolly's move to Feyenoord was to be the first step on a big-time career. After 15 appearances for the Dutch club there was a change of manager and Connolly got shuffled to the bottom of the deck. Poor Keith O'Neill, meanwhile, was in permanent sick bay, the bones in one of his feet apparently being constructed entirely out of cottage cheese.

Meanwhile Niall Quinn's knee was enjoying the same luck as McCarthy does generally and John Aldridge was packing it in because at 38 he was only guaranteed air miles every time he flew to Dublin.

That's not to say that McCarthy didn't make the mistakes to which every manager in the world is prone. Mark Kennedy's brand of genius tinged with juvenilia was indulged a little too often and the dogmatic emphasis on 5-3-1, which marked the early part of the McCarthy era, was difficult to phase out in favour of a more pragmatic philosophy.

So end of term then, and looking forward to September. Perhaps the moon is in Saturn and the stars are happily aligned for once.

Roy Keane and Keith O'Neill should be mended. Phil Babb or Gary Breen will claim a place in the defence and Ian Harte will become a left-side option. Alan Maybury's great talent will be more evident and Stephen McPhail will have joined the holding queue behind Damien Duff and Robbie Keane as the next great Irish player.

Barry Quinn might have overtaken Gareth Farrelly as the new Andy Townsend and David Connolly could actually be playing football between international games. Ditto Mark Kennedy. Niall Quinn could be back in the Premiership and Mark Kinsella's slow-burn ascent could find him there too.

Then there is the cast of thousands which Brian Kerr is busy buffing and polishing.

For once, McCarthy will have a series of options none of which involve depression, alcoholism or a call to the Samaritans. As this season winds down, that's a lot to look forward to.