Viewers ratings may be slow as Kenny live hits the air

As Kenny Cunningham embarks on the unenviable task of replacing Roy Keane as Republic of Ireland captain, Tom Humphries suggests there isstill a way back for the Corkman

What will we miss tonight? You know the answer already. HIM. Kenny Cunningham is speaking, comparing himself with HIM. Kenny Cunningham's will be the most self-effacing captaincy in international football when it begins tonight.

" I don't think," says Kenny, "that the manner of my performances is going to match the level of Roy Keane's performances. There were times when Roy was an absolute colossus for us in the middle. He took games by the scruff of the neck and dragged us through them. If you're looking for my manner of performance to match that, you'll probably be sorely disappointed over the next few months to be honest with you. The armband doesn't give me supernatural powers."

We'll have to make do without those powers in the future. It means hoping that Matt Holland and Mark Kinsella continue to play at 110 per cent of their potential. It means banning Damien Duff and Robbie Keane from ever travelling together in case they are in an accident and we lose both to injury. It means no Cork accent rallying the troops to war in the middle of foreign fields. Forget the rights and wrongs, everybody has their share of them. We have lost something. Tonight we begin life without Roy Keane.

Moscow seems a curiously appropriate place for Ireland to have come to for the first challenge of the post-Roy Keane era. It could be argued that the World Cup was actually that challenge but in effect those weeks were a transitional period and as an event it was a once-off. What Ireland face tonight best represents the country ahead. Hard games in foreign places.

In Moscow there are patches of opulence and patches of dire poverty. The skies are grey and smog choked. Beyond the city forest fires rage. There is nowhere in the city to find a clear view into the distance.

This Irish team has the same problems. If the Keane era was imperfect it brought with it a number of certainties, not least of which being that the captain would provide. He was grey and austere but he provided. Now the team is rich in patches, poor in patches. The future is smoggy. Fires rage uncontrollably in the bookshops. There is no post revolutionary exuberance left. The cold war between Mick McCarthy and Keane is scarcely a motivating factor at this stage.

Those players who knew Roy Keane well enough and long enough to have been hurt by him in Saipan and afterwards have largely left the scene. Yet the citizenry will judge every result in the new era in terms of what might have been achieved if the Premier of the Peoples Soviet of Cork had his way.

The conventional wisdom is that Ireland start this journey as favourites to win Group 10. Just what this is based on is hard to fathom but one imagines that the stoic Russians are among those having a little chuckle. McCarthy's fourth qualifying campaign as manager involves almost as many key changes as his first did. The magnificent obduracy of the late Steve Staunton period has given way to the renewed partnership of Kenny Cunningham and Gary Breen. No alarm bells there but perhaps a concern that the old errors will creep back in. Neither is as imposing as Staunton. Neither would have struck the pass which led to Robbie Keane's World Cup goal against Saudi Arabia.

In midfield, of course, Keane is gone and Mattie Holland has dropped down a division. It is a commonplace that Kinsella and Holland played so well in the World Cup that Keane was scarcely missed. The trouble is that although they did play very well, Keane was actually missed and as time goes on he will be missed more. Keane, especially as he has grown older, has seldom submitted a bad game for club or country and his fearsome reputation won Ireland many psychological battles even before games started. He also wrung 10 per cent more out of every Irish player around him.

Out wide we are in curious shape. The lonely torment of poor Kevin Kilbane at Sunderland FC continues and in the cash strapped Premiership his rehabilitative move back to the midlands and Aston Villa seems to have evaporated. He will hold his place though, above the challenge of Thomas Butler, who keeps him out of the team at Sunderland presently, while Damien Duff is being pared and chiselled till he looks like a striker.

On the other side Jason McAteer is a half step ahead of a posse which includes Gary Kelly, Rory Delap, Steven Reid and if he wants to be included on the basis of Helsinki, Colin Healy. Jason will need to get the best from himself every time if he isn't to be handed more time to pursue his lucrative career in literary criticism.

And up front? We never looked better at the World Cup than when Niall Quinn was on the field. Our penetration preceding the final ball to the strikers is poor generally and Quinn provided an option of last resort. We missed him right through the last qualifying campaign when we virtually only scored from midfield when he wasn't there. We'll miss him now.

The sense of transition is heightened by the list of tantalising possibilities and permutations just coming on stream. When Kenny Cunningham lavishes praise, as he did yesterday on Clinton Morrison for his ability to win and hold ball up front, there is a case perhaps for putting the needs of the team beyond the requirements of the code of loyalty which Mick McCarthy adheres to. It would hurt Kevin Kilbane greatly at this stage of his career to be dropped but surely Damien Duff is a better option out left.

Likewise among our central defenders John O'Shea is clocking up the Premiership minutes faster than anyone else barring Kenny Cunningham. Moscow may not be the place to blood him but by the end of this campaign one would expect him to have taken up residence at the back.

And Colin Healy. Surprisingly before transfer deadline day last week nobody arrived on a white horse to take him away from Celtic. Hopefully that will happen in January because Healy's stints in an Irish shirt have provided proof of an energetic talent which will be the mainstay of the Irish engine room for years to come. He operates on an end-to-end basis and strikes the ball beautifully. His tackling is Keane-like in its enthusiasm if not its aggression. Back in his first campaign as manager Mick McCarthy took risks because he had to. Now perhaps he should take risks because they might pay off.

If Ireland are as serious as they should be about going to the European championships in two years' time and having a serious cut at taking the jackpot they need Morrison, O'Shea and Healy to be made guys by then.

They will also need The Godfather himself, Roy Keane. He will be just nudging 33 then, in his late prime. If an accommodation can be made with him on a "letting bygones be bygones basis" it should be done.

McCarthy did himself a lot of good in Moscow this week when he spoke (albeit briefly) for the first time about Keane and the aftermath of Saipan. He conceded the core sadness of the entire situation and noted that his name will be linked to Keane's until he is in his dotage. McCarthy's pronouncements on matters which make him unhappy are generally all shot through with narkiness but he spoke commendably and reflectively about the pressures which Keane's absence brings. If that thoughtfulness is replicated in the manager's forthcoming book there may be a chance an equally reflective Keane could find a way of working within the Irish set-up again.

Mark Kinsella, who along with Holland toils always now under the shadow of Keane's reputation, denies that his absence is a distraction. "We want to get on with our own job. As players and a squad we have forgotten about it. As long as we keep doing what we are doing on the pitch hopefully we'll put it to bed."

Evidently Mark wasn't watching Sunderland versus Manchester United last Saturday. This Irish team will never entirely forget about Roy Keane. The relationship was too intense for that.

For now, though, Keane's successor in the armband is talking with the plain realism that is his trademark. Kenny Cunningham won't be the new Roy Keane. He hasn't that sort of personality.

"I haven't had the A4 folder out for the last couple of days with Roy's name and myself and ticking the pros and cons, to be honest with you. I think Roy was very much a leader by example the way he approached the game. He was and still is a world class player. He demanded a lot from the players around him and we responded to that. We realised we had in our midst a truly world class player. My approach won't change; maybe I'll be a little more vocal."

Kenny might not have the presence but he has the wit. Question of the week came his way.

"Kenny, you've played 500 senior matches now. Could you talk us through your goal?" To which Cunningham replied with a quick smile: "Ah, it's not something I like to brag about to be honest."

Things are a little more light-hearted now. The team don't travel with a smouldering volcano in their midst. Roy Keane's humour doesn't dictate the mood for the day.

Yet there's no great trick to surviving the good times. This week the team have gone about their business with the usual bovine sense of unquestioning routine.

There's an atmosphere in the air overhead, though. If this campaign leaves us with nothing to brag about one senses McCarthy's undoubted achievements will be measured ever more harshly against his failings.