Manager's Reaction: The definitive Mick McCarthy quote is the one about the tent. You're either in the tent peeing out or you're outside the tent peeing in. That's it. Black and white world.

Boarding the plane from Niigata to Chiba on Saturday night, the media had to pass Mick McCarthy in seat 1C. Beside him sat his daughter Anna. Hands reached out and shook McCarthy's. He took the handshakes, but his demeanour said it all. They came from outside the tent and meant less for it.

Anyway, he needed no commendations or back slaps. After a bad week fraught with tensions, tears and a few mistakes he'd gotten back to doing what he does best, putting a team out on a football pitch and getting the most out of it. Afterwards, he looked like a man who'd checked in his burdens and decided he wasn't going to pick them up again.

The nuts and the bolts of it? The tinkering that had to be done with a team that was misfiring and spluttering through the first half. This is his territory. None of your corps diplomatique stuff now.

"Half-time a few things needed to be addressed. Their two centre forwards were causing us problems down the middle, which I didn't think would be the case. We left two up front rather than one tracking back to pick up Foe.

"We improved. Individually, we played far far better. I was concerned we were losing out in so many one-on-ones."

There were logistics and matters of personnel which needed sorting and there was also the team's overall spirit. Something wrong with the karma when they came in. McCarthy spoke to them all individually and then spoke to them collectively. One theme. Regret.

"It was passing us by a little bit. I don't know if Cameroon were playing as well as they could, but we certainly weren't. There's a sign somebody put up on the board in the dressing-room before the match. 'No Regrets'. I don't know if Taff or Packie put it up there, but it sums it up for us. I said to them: 'Don't come off regretting that we could have done a bit more'.

"Nobody consciously goes out and doesn't do their best, but don't ever come off - especially from big games, from the World Cup finals - thinking it just passed you by. Look after your own patch, play as well as you possibly can. That's what we did."

There were moments when his palms sweated and his head swam. Eto'o lived up to his advance billing. Foe was mighty around the middle for periods. Kalla was immense and majestic at the heart of the Cameroon defence. The refereeing was a little eccentric. Damien Duff, instead of winning frees before the break, found himself conceding them.

"You can always wonder what might have been, you can go back to Lansdowne Road and Kluivert and the first three minutes against Holland. They nearly scored. You deal with reality, I suppose. What did and didn't happen."

Reality has been hitting McCarthy upside the head for nearly two weeks now. The past week, one he promised himself he was going to enjoy to the maximum, turned into what he described on Saturday as "the worst week of his life" for him and his family. He acknowledged that it probably wasn't any better for Roy Keane, but one thing made the difference: "The lads have been great in training and the second-half performance answered all questions for me.

"They gave a lot of physical and mental energy. In the first half that showed. They expended so much energy. A lot of weight, a lots of fluid has to be replenished, but we'll be fine. We have a fit bunch of lads and we'll be okay. "When you concede a goal six minutes before half-time, it kind of pisses you off. If somebody can change that for me, I'd like to meet him. I was unhappy with their goal at half-time. I thought we conceded it too easily. If somebody from our lot nutmegged somebody in the box, we'd be lording it. All the goals that we concede are awful, all the goals that we score are brilliant."

It comes back to the tents thing.

He speaks again about the changes he made, about Gary Kelly playing in three positions and doing well in each, about Steve Finnan and the merits of Mattie Holland and Kevin Kilbane. Another Mick quote springs to mind. He often speaks about having the strength to change the things he can change, the serenity to accept those he can't and the wisdom to know the difference.

Perhaps that wisdom deserted him in Saipan, but on a sideline in Niigata where nothing was serene and all that was required was strength, he closed the Pandora's box he had inadvertently opened.