Tom Humphries reflects on a job well done with boss Brian Kerr.

We're standing in this nice glass-walled area in the Lokomotiv Stadium waiting for the press conferences to get going. Outside in the gloaming we can see a man half running, half walking across the pitch towards us. Big anorak. Small man.

Familiar gait. "C'mon The Greener!" roars someone.

And indeed it is he. Brian Kerr's step quickens. Two matches in charge. Two winning press conferences. The Georgians send their goalkeeping coach to keep Kerr company. The manager, Alexander Chivadze, is too upset to join us.

The scene in Tbilisi is reminiscent of Mick McCarthy's last away press conference in Moscow. There is noise. There is confusion about the translation. Lots of people are moving about.

An unhappy McCarthy walked out of that one. Here Brian Kerr looks over at the Irish media and says, "Lads, I'll do one with ye on yer own when this is over."

"Excellent performance," he says by way of introductory comment. "Very disciplined. Well structured. Felt we were in control apart from the spell where they equalised. We made their goalie work hard - couple of smashing saves from Lee Carsley and Damien Duff. We had a lot of pressure, a lot of corner kicks. Hard working, gutsy display. They have good players, good technique and excellent movement."

He settles into the business. Perspective first. What's done is done now. "The reality is we've lost two games and we're trying to make up ground. That puts us ahead of Georgia. That's all we know."

We drag him back. His brain has gone ahead to Tirana. For us there's more to be wrung out of this.

"We gave away nothing. The only scare was with Gary Breen at the last moment in injury time when he made a brilliant saving tackle. John has a little to learn about playing left back but overall they stood up well. Kevin Kilbane had a lot of defending work to do but the discipline and shape was as I hoped. Players aren't used to the Georgian system, where they play one man behind the front two and they push the wing backs right up. That's not a common style so we had a bit of work to do in organising our own shape. Dealing with three in the middle against two. That sort of thing."

He talks about the discipline. Nuts and bolts stuff. Chris Hughton, Packie, Noel O'Reilly and all the staff. It changes the nature of the burden, spreads it out.

"They all have worked so hard. They've worked very hard to ensure the team were well prepared and catered for. I always feel pressure, if it was a schoolboy league team or whatever. I feel I have to satisfy myself and the people all around me. I was calm, I was fine; I knew we had prepared as well as we could."

That calm was all too evident in the second half. Things got frantic. No subs even warmed up.

" Well, I felt we had no area that I thought was weak for us. In other ways our options are limited. There's not a lot of experience on the bench in terms of throwing someone into that. The strategies were still working, the areas we hoped to exploit were still there. I felt there was a goal in there. Damien's header was in the 79th minute. Steven Carr was up there getting the cross in. We'd corner kick after corner kick. I was more worried had we enough back to cover."

So that was it. First competitive game as a senior international manager. An away win in a tricky place. We wondered if he had entertained doubts on the eve.

"Well, I was very calm. I knew that I had worked very hard. I had a few distractions, some work that needed doing with youths teams, but I honestly had nothing much else on my mind for the past while. Thinking of the words I would say and when I needed to say them. Working out the roles of the staff, when to let them work, when I needed them to work. It was down to the final bits, what we said. I didn't doubt myself because I never thought I could have done more."

So when the time came what did he say? "I reminded them of how hard a road it had been for everyone in the room to get to the pitch we were at. Including everyone on the staff. We're scrappers. Not many of us were born with great talent. We'd worked hard, dedicated ourselves.

"Afterwards there was a sense of joy. Had to work so hard to get a result. Fellas like Kevin Kilbane - their workrate and effort was so huge. They are very, very honest players. Sometimes in games you get less than what you deserve. Today we got what we deserved."