Soccer: Emmet Malone foresees a tough year ahead for both Republic ofIreland manager Brian Kerr and FAI chief executive Fran Rooney

It was a Welsh rugby coach who, after a particularly grim performance by his team in Scotland many years ago, told his players to take a good look at the sights during the journey back home for it was the last time any of them would see them at the union's expense.

A similar remark from Steve Hansen would be unthinkable now for modern-day Welsh rugby's pool of talent is a shallow one and the current coach, like the Republic of Ireland's Brian Kerr, must content himself in the face of disappointment with resolving to get more out of much the same group of players the next time around.

If Kerr was blessed with real options then the programme of friendly matches being assembled in Merrion Square for the New Year would provide the opportunity for a real shake-up of a squad that, though still young, looked tired and short of ideas in its final two competitive games of 2003.

The reality, however, is that perhaps 18 or 20 of the players who travelled to Basel in October will be in the Irish squad for the first World Cup qualifying game next September. The likes of Andy Reid or Liam Miller may be starting games for the Republic by then but for all the newcomers' undoubted promise it will take a return to form by many of the side's more established faces if Ireland are to make even the play-offs from a group that includes Europe's leading football nation, France, and a young Swiss team that is expected to get a good deal better.

Ireland's overall record this year of seven wins and three draws in 11 games is, on the face of it, impressive enough. But when a handful of victories in low-key friendlies are stripped out the reality is we are not left with all that much to cheer about.

In six competitive games Ireland could really only be said to have played well once, against Georgia at home.

And while Kerr's men took 10 points from four games against their qualifying group's lesser two sides, they came nowhere close to producing what was required in the vital games against Russia and Switzerland. In fact, they had no more than a deflected Damien Duff goal and a handful of half chances to show for 180 minutes of football against two good but by no means great sides.

Having inherited, as new managers usually do, an unenviable situation, Kerr was further hampered by a number of setbacks during his first few months in charge. Roy Keane, after repeatedly suggesting that the continued involvement of Mick McCarthy with the team was the main barrier to his return and then actually telling the new manager he would play for his country again, had another change of heart and, under pressure from his club, confirmed his retirement.

Gary Kelly and, more importantly, Dean Kiely followed suit over the next few months. Robbie Keane missed a couple of qualifiers and played in another while looking well off his best. Jason McAteer spent almost the entire year laid up through injury, Kenny Cunningham was forced to sit out the Basel game through suspension and Mark Kinsella's encounters with first-team football at Aston Villa became fewer and much farther between.

None of which would have mattered quite as much had the players for whom 2003 was supposed to be a breakthrough year made the progress that had been hoped for. Unfortunately, however, Clinton Morrison struggled with both injury and his form at Birmingham, Colin Healy only finally escaped his enforced life of leisure at Celtic in late summer and Steven Reid completed a long drawn-out move to Blackburn around the same time only to have his early months at Ewood Park disrupted by injury.

Elsewhere, Gary Doherty remained a bit-part player at Spurs where his form never justified the starring roles he was sometimes handed at international level, Stephen McPhail's career continued to switch with bewildering regularity between first and reverse gears while Ian Harte, Gary Breen and Lee Carsley all fell out of favour with their club managers for prolonged spells over the course of the year.

For all of that, however, the teams fielded against Russia at home and Switzerland away should have been capable of taking more than one point from six and the flatness of the Irish performances in those games suggested that Kerr has not yet figured out how to inspire this group of players in the way that he did so many others down the years.

Things have, at least, taken a positive turn during the past couple of months with Miller and Andy Reid making significant progress with their clubs, McAteer and Steven Reid recovering their fitness and Harte his place in the Leeds team.

At Spurs Keane has cemented his reputation in recent times, Duff has exceeded expectations at Chelsea and Morrison looks set to benefit, for a while at least, from injuries to others.

Much of that, of course, may change again between now and Ireland's first World Cup qualifier in September when, if past experience is anything to go by, Kerr and his employers will be hoping to take on their main group rivals in the aftermath of the European Championship. But it is not until then that we will see whether the manager is capable of generating the sort of improvement that will be necessary if the Republic are to trouble France and eclipse the Swiss in the race for a place at Germany 2006.

On the domestic front it's been another year of moderate progress and significant setbacks for the eircom League. Two championship races finished during 2003, both of which were dominated by Bohemians and Shelbourne who took a title each.

The dominance of the two big full-time outfits combined with the quality of the football they produced when at their best suggested there would be no turning back from the march towards a more truly professional league with other clubs having little option but to carry the financial burden of travelling down the same road.

News that both clubs were struggling under the weight of their commitments, however, and that each would be cutting expenditure for next year has dented confidence again and made talk of a significant breakthrough in Europe seem fanciful.

Administratively, the FAI has also had to endure another tough 12 months.

While significant elements of the Genesis Report were implemented and the association's decision-making processes do now look a little less cumbersome, the organisation seems to be at least as bitterly divided as ever with its new chief executive, Fran Rooney, becoming a focus of that division rather than, as had been intended, a unifying force.

For Rooney, like Kerr, these are still early days but the year ahead will tell us much about both men's ability to deliver on the considerable expectations they have inherited.