Mick McCarthy will preach a gospel of ambition tinged with realism before sending his players out for this evening's World Cup play-off against Belgium at Lansdowne Road. The pressures of Ireland's biggest match in four years induced no significant change in the match plan articulated by the manager since the draw was made in Switzerland.
Yet, in restating his commitment to an expansive approach, he was careful to point up the dangers of attempting to get players forward at every opportunity.
It is, he stresses, a tie in which the priorities are not wholly dissimilar to European club football. And close to the top of that list is the need to keep it tight in defence, to guard against the risk of conceding a home goal.
"That wouldn't necessarily be disastrous, but obviously it would make the job a lot more difficult over the two legs of the tie," he said. "Essentially, however, it's mostly about what happens at the other end."
"To give ourselves a realistic chance of surviving the play-off, we need to win our home game. And I fervently believe that we will."
For his opposite number, Georges Leekens, no such crisis exists in defining the order of priorities. His mission is to devise a defensive plan which will keep them competitive for the return game in Brussels on November 15th.
He will almost certainly structure his team in the hope of blunting the Irish attack by sheer weight of numbers in and around the fringes of his penalty area and then depend on the pace and power of the Eindhoven striker Luc Nilis to exploit any lapses in concentration in the home defence.
McCarthy was not laying himself open to charges of adopting a condescending attitude to the Belgians when he described them as a good technical team with the ability to trouble even the best teams when they're at their best.
Yet, the evidence of their two qualifying games against Wales, both of which they struggled to win by the slenderest of margins, suggests that they still encounter problems in dealing with what they term, the "kick and rush" element in the British-style game.
The bigger challenge for Leekens, however, is to disguise the loss of those players who form the fulcrum of his team. Into this category comes Enzo Scifo, a gifted midfield player who first burst on the international scene during the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico.
Also missing is Luis Oliveira, the Fiorentina striker and their top scorer, and Gilles De Bilde of PSV Eindhoven, who would normally have taken over his role in attack. To these can be added the names of Philippe Albert, the elegant if sometimes brittle Newcastle defender, and Lorenzo Staelens, who filled the role of sweeper against Wales earlier in the month.
Franky Van Der Elst, like Scifo, is hoping to join the small band who have played in four consecutive World Cup finals and consequently will be as committed as ever in the anchor berth in midfield. And for others like Eric Van Meir, Luc Nilis and the Schalke 04 pair Marc Wilmots and Michael Goossens, the sense of opportunity will be no less pronounced.
Yet, the inescapable fact is that Ireland will never have a better chance of beating the Belgians for the first time in a World Cup game. And McCarthy will make sure that message is not lost on the players. There were occasions during the qualifying series, notably in the home game against Iceland and the visit to Macedonia last April, when the Irish team looked less than credible challengers for a place in the World Cup finals in France next summer.
Two precious wins in Iceland and Lithuania last month changed all that, however, and showed that McCarthy's team, still only evolving as he approaches the end of his second year in charge, will have earned their spurs if, at the end of a marathon qualifying programme, they make the cut for a third successive occasion.
Unlike Leekens, McCarthy has not not been obliged to redraft his plan of campaign because of lastminute injuries. With the exception of Michael Evans, ruled out with a fractured cheek, he has lost none of the 22 players he named in his original squad almost a fortnight ago.
That conceals the fact, of course, that he is without Roy Keane. And therein lies one of the great imponderables of the tie. After a long and at times frustrating apprenticeship, Keane has grown into a potent international player this year, a point graphically illustrated in an outstanding display in Bucharest in April.
His loss is correctly described by team captain Andy Townsend as a massive blow. Conversely, it inflates Townsend's own role into one of critical importance on his return from the knee injury which kept him out of the 1-1 draw with Romania earlier in the month.
As Keane's influence on the team grew with each consecutive game, it tended to minimise the captain's contribution. Now he must rediscover the form which made him one of the more effective midfielders in international football.
Apart from supplying running power in attacking situations, he will be expected to prevent Wilmots from attacking the central defensive partnership of Ken Cunningham and Ian Harte. Given that they are two converted full backs, Cunningham and Harte have done well since coming together in the pivotal positions in April. This threatens, however, to be their biggest ordeal yet and consequently the ability of players like Townsend and Denis Irwin to provide support will be critical.
If Wilmots poses the biggest danger in the visiting team, McCarthy will be looking to the incisive running of Ray Houghton and the proven opportunism of Tony Cascarino and David Connolly to fashion the win which would put them in good heart for the return leg.
Cascarino, in particular, is on a flood tide of confidence and while the threat has clearly been identified in the Belgian camp, the hope is that the big man can produce the goals needed to supplant Frank Stapleton as Ireland's top scorer. If he does, it promises to be a long night of celebration in Dublin.
