Tom Humphries/LockerRoom: As the evenings grow longer nothing pleases me more than to draw down a pitcher of home-made lemonade and to amble out to the porch with it. There I sit in my rocking chair and watch the night come down and I share my thoughts on sport with the younger folk.

"Football," they will ask, "what sort of game is football?" And I'll finish plugging the bowl of my pipe before I answer. I'll inspect my work to make sure the tobacco ain't packed in too tight and I'll inhale the sweet nut and woodbine scent of the tobacco before I answer.

"Football," I'll say, pausing again to look around at the rapt faces, "football is a funny old game."

There will be gasps of course. Funny? Why funny? And so we will begin. I will point out that many players have only one thing to say about their country. They say that they would die for it. They say that playing for their country means everything.

It should mean everything but it doesn't. In most cases the country reared them, taught them their trade and by allowing them wear the national jersey boosted their confidence and enhanced their value. All that and they probably love their country too.

Some players would indeed play for their country until the arthritis slowed them down or the Alzheimer's made the fixture list confusing. Others play when they can or when it suits or when the club suggests it's a good idea. You can't help feeling that in the case of many of the Irish team who went to the World Cup last summer it will suit less and less.

Now, we're not talking about Roy Keane here. We don't want to get that particular bonfire blazing again. We've all accepted that he has gone. Last Wednesday night was an indication of just how much we miss him.

Other people may be gone too. Different types of disappearances. They just ain't saying yet. It was intriguing though to see several names who were unavailable for Ireland last week starting and finishing for their clubs. Miraculous almost.

Perhaps there is nothing mendacious about it. No great mystery either. Perhaps even some of those who turned up for Ireland don't have the passion they once had. That would be understandable. Most of the team Brian Kerr inherited grew up under Mick McCarthy. It was a long, long climb to Japan and South Korea and when they got there it was a unique trip. Draining. Surreal. Not definitively a failure. Nor definitively a success.

And at the end, after all that emotional commitment, several key characters retired. Mick himself feels now that the end of the World Cup was the natural time to move on but instead he and the team had to endure that ugly, dispiriting epilogue of two games in the autumn.

Would it be any wonder that late in a long season a few players might begin to cast around for excuses to miss international duty rather than start at the ground floor with a new manager and a new set-up. Country is everything. Sometimes.

Lets face it - we went to the World Cup with a young team and came back with an old one. We were all young then and we are all a good deal older now. Things have changed hugely. Ian Harte played every qualifier and started every World Cup game.

He hasn't been near a Kerr squad. In the summer the team revolved around Staunton and Quinn. Gone. Before that they responded to the genius of Keane. Gone. The light humour of McAteer and Gary Kelly? Gone. That's a lot of personality for any team to do without.

Brian Kerr was playing the most difficult games off the pitch in Tbilisi and Tirana. The last couple of weeks were easily the most complicated of his management career. You can see it on his face and read it in his words in press conferences how delicate it is. If he comes into a press conference with a senior player from Mick's old guard then Brian is tight-lipped and a little sharper with the press than if he comes in with one of his youngsters. On those occasions you half expect him to take out a banjo and sing.

All that eggshell stuff is the residue not just of the summer but of a long process of entrenchment by the team. As the years went on they retreated into themselves to an extraordinary degree as the philosophy of "inside the tent pissing out or outside the tent pissing in" took hold.

That's changing slowly and it was unusual in Tirana airport on Thursday morning to see players coming into the departure area and sitting chatting with journalists. That hasn't happened in a long time.

In the context of what players he has, the time he has had with them and the difficulties in motivating some who may subconsciously feel that the end came for them when the World Cup closed down, Brian Kerr has done exceptionally well.

While he may openly lament the absence of some of those who haven't been able to make his squads yet, he may still decide that the politics of the situation is best served by the mix he has and by the further infusion of young players.

He needs a striker. Big and quick preferably. Three games in and it seems as if he has decided that David Connolly is not going to fit that bill. Nor in all likelihood is Gary Doherty, who still looks runny raw there and who will probably be preferred as a centre half by Spurs (or another club) in the long run.

It seems that perhaps we've come to the end of the very long era when we always had a big aerial threat up front.

Don Givens's hapless under-21 side doesn't offer any answers. Graham Barrett hasn't set the world alight at Brighton. Jon Daly might be good enough in time but for now he's learning. Elsewhere Alan Lee has a moderately impressive record at Rotherham but not one that screams the case for inclusion. We await the health bulletins on Clinton Morrisson and Richard Sadlier with interest.

If the forwards get enough bodies to fill the shirts the midfield still needs a little imaginative zest. Three urgent wishes for the summer would be transfers for Steven Reid and Colin Healy and Stephen McPhail. Sunderland are unlikely to let Sean Thornton go anywhere but he belongs in the Premiership. Impressive last week for the under-21s, he scored a fine goal in a man-of-the-match performance on Saturday and Chelsea's Gianfranco Zola sought him out in the dressingroom afterwards to swap jerseys. Future Irish midfield plans will depend on those few plus Duffer and perhaps Liam Miller.

Defence, oddly enough, seems sound. Shay Given is all we could hope for and more. Finnan and Carr battling on the right, with the loser still being the best option to play on the left. Then the central positions. The general excellence of Cunningham and Breen will be enhanced by having John O'Shea, Andy O Brien and Richard Dunne snapping at their heels.

It's a funny old game. When the draw was made for these qualifiers it looked quite easy. When you've seen each of the teams play, as Ireland have now, it should still be easy, but the balances are all askew. Time to kick back on the porch and watch Brian Kerr think his way through it. So far, so good.