The Manchester City shorts he wore suggested he hadn't quite got back into the hang of international build-ups. However, everything else yesterday seemed to point towards Mark Kennedy having slipped comfortably back into Mick McCarthy's squad.

Having missed Ireland's first five World Cup qualifiers, Kennedy said he was delighted to be back but conceded, to some extent at least, he probably owed the recall to Damien Duff's absence through injury.

Whether he would have made the 22-man panel is one thing but McCarthy made no bones yesterday about the fact the 24-year-old Dubliner's chances of starting tomorrow night against Andorra have been greatly enhanced by the Blackburn winger's unavailability.

"No doubt about it," said the Ireland boss, "Damien played well over there so, if he'd been here, he would have played again. As he's not Mark has a good chance because he's the sort of player you need when you're talking about getting in behind a tightly-packed defence like the one we're going to be up against this week at Lansdowne Road."

The Ireland manager made clear he had no problem with the Andorrans digging in for what they could get out of the game. "What you look for out of games is dictated by what you have at your disposal, you try to get as good a result as possible with what you have available to you and they'll look for a draw which is perfectly understandable."

While others have argued teams like Andorra should have to take part in a pre-qualification process, McCarthy maintained yesterday, "they're a country so they should be allowed to compete in international competition.

"I don't know when we're supposed to have become so big and clever that we could be looking down on the smaller nations coming up behind us."

Nevertheless McCarthy acknowledges anything other than a win, in what will be his 50th game in international management, would be a terrible blow. The losses of Roy Keane and Niall Quinn will have been disappointing but McCarthy said he is happy with the strength of the panel available to him and "for others the fact those players won't be here, will be an opportunity".

Of those who have reported for training, Gary Kelly and Steve Finnan have been taking things lightly due to slight knocks they picked up over the past week or so while Mark Kinsella has a sore toe. All three, however, are expected to be fit to play.

While Keane will almost certainly be back for the games against Portugal and Estonia in June, Quinn's ongoing back problems continue to pose questions about whether he will be fit.

Yesterday, though, the Ireland manager admitted he wasn't the only manager in the group with doubts about key players given that Portugal's Fernando Couto and the Netherlands' Edgar Davids face allegations of drug use.

McCarthy was asked if he had any knowledge of such incidents among his own players. "Are you winding me up?" he laughed. "What am I going to say to a question like that? Anyway, have you ever seen us play so well that you thought drugs must be involved?"

The Republic of Ireland's World Cup wins against Cyprus and Andorra last month were recognised yesterday when McCarthy was named the Philips Sports Manager of the Month for March.