PAUL McGRATH left Cardiff yesterday hoping that he will not have to wait as long for his 84th Ireland cap as he did for the 83rd against Wales the previous evening.

On a desolate night in the Arms Park, it needed some conviction to drum up enthusiasm for a scoreless draw which did nothing to disprove the theory that this fixture, enacted in the inclemencies of February, has run its course.

Mick McCarthy, never to be found wanting in such challenges, chose McGrath as his theme when pointing up the benefits of the exercise in the context of his World Cup preparations.

The manager stopped short of saying that Ireland's most celebrated player would be in his team to face Macedonia at Skopje on April 2nd but for his audience, the message was clear enough.

"Paul McGrath is and has been a class act but I needed to know if at this stage of his career, he was still capable of doing a big job for Ireland," he said. "I think most people will have been reassured on this point by what they saw in Cardiff."

With that well documented propensity for self effacement,, the player was prepared to let his manager do the talking and the rest of us to wonder, yet again, if he is capable of dredging still more great nights from the well which has produced so many.

People with even a morsel of romance will trust that the answer is in the affirmative and that his remarkable career, in which the improbable has been met and mastered on so many occasions, can be extended sufficiently to enable him to become the first Republic of Ireland player to win 100 caps.

On the evidence of what we saw on Tuesday, it is going to require a massive exercise in application and no small amount of good fortune to enable him to do so. Perhaps, it was his long absence from international football or the fact that he was he was flanked by two players, Kenny Cunninham and Ian Harte, still only making their way in the game at this level, but for whatever reason, the great man struggled to impose himself in the old manner.

That, perhaps, had more to do with the physical presence of Mark Hughes and John Hartson, neither of whom lacked motivation on the night, than any perceived weaknesses in McGrath's performance on a night when, significantly, he was putting in his best work in the second half.

That, in itself is a cause for encouragement for in spite of the occasional doubt born of Tuesday's performance, the certainty is that Ireland need Paul McGrath, fit and performing to pedigree, when they head off for those two critical World Cup games in Macedonia and Romania in April.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Irish manager was entitled to derive encouragement from the contribution of his Wimbledon forward Jon Goodman on his first appearance in the green shirt.

Goodman, some way short of match practice this season, still brought a lot of movement to the line and on one occasion, at least, brought an impressive, element of invention to a predictable game when he turned two Welsh defenders, only to see Mark Crossley parry the shot.

The goal, which would have enabled him to equal the achievement of players like Frank Stapleton, David Kelly and Tommy Coyne who all scored on their first initial appearance, was eventually denied him but that was down primarily to some excellent goalkeeping by Crossley, another of the evening's debutants.

Goodman will have impressed McCarthy with this performance but whether it was good enough to get him into the squad for Macedonia ahead of Keith O'Neill or David Connolly, assuming both are fit, is a moot point.

More likely, perhaps, is the retention of Ian Harte, the young Leeds United player, who fully justified his surprising selection in the team with a substantial contribution on the left side of the back three.

For one so young, Harte's strength and composure on the ball is remarkable. Moreover, his ability in the air was illustrated on a couple of occasions against such formidable opponents as Hughes and Hartson.

Faced with the task of permutating two from three left-sided players, Harte, Steve Staunton and Terry Phelan, in a full strength team, McCarthy, one suspects, is more likely to be attracted by the options which the first two offer.

Significantly, Bobby Gould, the Welsh manager, identified Harte as one of the better players in the Irish team on the night and his enthusiasm was shared by McCarthy when he met the press yesterday.

Like John Giles, Eoin Hand and Jack Charlton before him, the Irish manager discovered that Welsh teams invariably battle with spartans when confronted by green shirts. But he still insists that the Cardiff experience has not deflected him in the all consuming crusade of bringing his squad to the World Cup finals for a third consecutive occasion.

"It was another important learning experience, containing a lot that was encouraging and some which needed correction," he said. "And most important of all, it was an opportunity to focus minds for the day we go back to work in the World Cup in Macedonia in April."