LockerRoom/Tom HumphriesNearly a week into the New Year and it's quiet out there. Quieter than a meeting of the Antrim branch of the GPA. Too quiet.

No heads above parapets. No assassination attempts. No stray bullets whizzing past. No loose talk. Imagine if it could always be like this.

The FAI are the best example of the new detente. The Genesis Report has yet to be digested, indeed it has yet to be properly chewed, but at least at the top things are being done with the sense of decorum that Brendan Menton, in fairness to him, always seemed to hanker after.

The appointment of a manager to the national team might yet sink to the level of bawdy farce that previous such exercises have become, but as yet it's been fairly leakproof and foolproof. Bryan Hamilton hasn't been going about his business dogged by reporters and photographers. The candidates haven't been speaking to anyone. The speculation has been low-key.

Outside in the real world there is chatter aplenty about how things will go when Hamilton's recommendations are put to the little committee which will make the appointment. There are difficulties there,

a ménage a trois of personality clashes and personal histories. The water may be muddy up ahead.

Maybe it's just the people I've been speaking to or the papers I read, but it seems to me that outside of the FAI, out

in the big world of taxi drivers and saloon bar logicians, there is near unanimity on the issue of The Job. Were we to appoint by means of plebiscite, Brian Kerr would win by a landslide.

Right time and place. Right face. And the feeling Kerr could prove the Premiership isn't the only school in town, that he could make a statement on behalf of the domestic game and his belief in its possibilities like nobody else could. Not by filling his selections with League of Ireland players, but by bringing his world-class knowledge of the game to a world stage, by being one of our own who didn't have to get validation from outside.

So, are we big enough and confident enough to give him the job that he is big enough and confident enough to do? The broad feeling appears to be that Kerr should be given till the end of the current European Championship campaign to prove himself. Were it up to me I'd give him four years plus the job of restructuring the game here, of implementing the plans he has in his head to stop the endless drain of young kids to English clubs which use them as fodder. Out of happenstance as much as anything else some of them make it. The rest get thrown back.

Kerr's experience with players speaks to the wastefulness of the system in England. There's no real explanation as to why talents like Ger Crossley, Colin Hawkins and Shaun Byrne shouldn't be making good on their abilities by now.

Look at the curious case of Richie Partridge, one of those guys who has been on the cusp of "making it" for the longest time. He has been so long at Liverpool he is as much a part of the place as the This Is Anfield sign. In that period he has played one game. Liverpool beat Stoke City in the League Cup by eight goals to one. And Richie went back to the reserves. When Liverpool got to the final that year they brought all the players in the club along for the weekend. Except one who was injured and Richie Partridge. Just a thoughtless oversight.

Now for 10 games Liverpool have been struggling, partly for want of an effective winger. And the best winger in Division One is at Coventry, on loan from Liverpool. Richie Partridge. And Liverpool are a club who know what they are doing.

Kerr knows this world and cares about changing it, he cares about having an academy of football here wherein Irish kids can get that little bit more education, maturity and enjoy a home life while still having a shot at the big league.

And the fact that he knows and he cares gives him the authority that the doubters feel he might lack. I can't imagine a player in the current Irish squad who would decide he didn't want to play for Ireland because Brian Kerr doesn't come from a Premiership background. And if that's the way they feel, well . . .

So it boils down to a few men in the FAI and to what attitude they have. Kerr's face might be too familiar to them. There's one or maybe two who have resented the money spent on our hugely successful youth set up. Perhaps the apparently overwhelming support of media, players and general public makes them leery.

For my money, and as any bookie will tell you my money ain't the smart money, they'll go for it. The FAI could use a little credit and a little goodwill. Doing something as simple as appointing the right candidate will buy them that.

Further good news (suspicious now, aren't you) would be the FAI and the IRFU making good on their plans for a joint new stadium. Mention so far of a docklands sight with a more modest capacity then the Bertie Bowl seems eminently sensible.

We are into the fifth generation of stadium designs and what the two associations are proposing fits right in line. A place that people can walk to and live around and have offices close to and restaurants and pubs nearby. They are building and planning a whole new Dublin down in the docklands and what the FAI and the IRFU have been proposing is a million times more sensible than Abbotstown or Eircom Park ever were.

And Bertie Ahern should put the Government wallet where his good intentions were. The GAA should be paid what they were promised for the development of Croke Park and a similar amount should be laid down towards the cost of the docklands stadium. And after that the three associations should be permitted to just get on with their own relationship. If there are occasions when soccer or rugby feel that they might need a stadium with a capacity of 80,000 it would be nice if the GAA felt it could make Croke Park available without being press-ganged into it by anti-GAA bigots.

We're coming out of the era of good times and the turbulence this last while has been difficult to cope with. We were told when the going was good we'd never had it better, that we had it all. What they meant was that those who had the most got the most and now it's over and the hospitals aren't fixed and the education system isn't fixed. Time to give us back our distractions. Sport is the opiate of the have-nots. A decent stadium, a national manager who knows us, a few good results and the GAA summer beckoning.

You know Bertie, we'd nearly forget the state you have us in.