Manager's reaction:  The look on Brian Kerr's face was worth the following thousand words. He came into the interview room chewing on some class of gobstopper and sat silently for 30 seconds beaming mischievously at those waiting to transcribe his thoughts.

He was never going to say that his team were luckier than a pasture full of four leaf clovers but this was better. He was never going to criticise his charges for drifting in and out of consciousness while in control of a football but this look was enough. Brian Kerr wasn't going to say that to win a vital Euro qualifier via a comic injury-time own goal having played badly for the previous 92 minutes that you have to have been dipped into jam at birth.

He wasn't going to say those things but his face said them all. Sadly there's no shorthand for that look. No typeface that says "phew."

"It was a bit late alright," he said of the goal "I felt, though, we'd win the game. Later and later I wasn't so sure. Up until when Damien went off I thought we'd sneak a goal but they got some time late on. I said to Noel, though, that we'd get one more chance. We got it."

So he sat down and we asked Kerr hack questions of the standard variety and he gave stock answers and we were all happy.

He wasn't going to break the performance apart and hold the pieces which displeased him up for our inspection. You got the impression there were enough little bits of displeasing football to make an entire jigsaw for him to puzzle over early this week.

Nor was he inclined to go chiselling on about various players and how well or how badly they had done. Listen, you get a final minute reprieve you don't critique the accommodation on death row.

Kerr starts this working week in a mood for whistling. His team are growing and learning. His rivals are dropping points all round them. Nobody expected this. Except perhaps himself. He doesn't have to blurt to the media. Doesn't have to sing. The points tot will make the news.

Most interesting was the spark which lit in Kerr when the issue of what constitutes sporting behaviour was raised. A little background first. The Albanians had already raised the issue. Hans-Peter Briegel had noted ruefully that his side, innocent rubes in the big city, had put the ball into touch to allow striker Igli Tare receive treatment for an injury. The Irish did not return the ball and began the move that ended with that rather sorrowful and costly own goal.

This was the meat.

Before losing two World Cup finals Briegel was a decathlete. He still bears the sturdy frame and stern expression of the competitor he once was but his versatility doesn't extend to languages. Thus on Saturday we ended up with a journalist sitting on Briegel's left hand side offering English translations and his stereo twin, a big man who looked like a Belushi brother, sitting on the other hand offering Albanian versions.

The translation hoohah lent the entire press conference a comical air, only heightened by Briegel's wounded expression. His team had come and played well and been beaten by an injury-time goal which had jam on it and were he more fluent he might have noted that the home side, were poxed,haunted or jammy.

Instead we heard the words "fair play" being thrown into the mix. Not as in "fair play to The Greener", but rather "Ireland are famed for their fair play, and we kicked the ball out because our player was injured," he said. "Ireland had the ball to throw back but they didn't give it back. Make up your own mind, but Albania were expecting the ball back from the Irish. It is an unwritten law in football so we cannot make a complaint to UEFA, but it is the law of fair play."

Any legitimacy or merit the complaint had was lost as we got more translations than a Eurovision scorecard and our questions sought to inflate the business into a major international incident possibly involving shock, awe and weapons of mass destruction.

Briegel conceded that as the rule was unwritten it would be hard to complain about it. He never fully grasped the translation regarding the Sheffield United versus Arsenal FA Cup game of a few years ago which was replayed after Kanu ignored the unwritten rule. Finally he just left shrugging his immense shoulders. Kerr arrived. He responded to the allegation of unsporting behaviour like a forward who gets a kick on the ankle. He kicked back.

"There was a lot of unsporting behaviour when their players looked like there was something wrong with them, but I didn't see an awful lot wrong with them," he said. "There was also an incident in the second half after their goalkeeper was injured and play was restarted with the referee giving them the ball. The referee said 'there you go lads attack them'. They attacked us when our players assumed the referee was going to invite them to kick the ball into our half of the pitch. They didn't go about their business in the second half in what I would have thought was a fair way."

And that was it. Lansdowne Road has seen a couple of last-minute goals over the past few months. One saw off Mick McCarthy. The other altered the complexion of Brian Kerr's competitive debut at home.

Between now and Wednesday there is much to ponder. Damien Duff's injury should keep Kerr awake at night. So should the fitness of Steven Reid. The midfield needs a little more verve and drive than it had on Saturday. The Irish full backs were fine on Saturday but their distribution had the rusty colour of players who have been off for a few weeks. Wednesday should see an incremental improvement in sharpness.

"There was a period today when we were aggressive, making breaks and making chances. There goal was well constructed we didn't pressure them enough. It's part of the learning curve. There you go. It didn't matter in the end and I hope there's a lesson learned from it," said Kerr. He prepares for war like no general before him. Being lucky might be part of his armoury or it might just be like Gary Player said, "the harder I work the luckier I get".