"It will be straight. I think players will be inspired by our passion, I think we have the job because they recognise our passion." Tom Humphries samples what we're in for over the next few years
From somewhere in the media scrum a mobile phone rings, plaintive and clear. "If that's for me," says Brian Kerr without breaking breath, "I won't be home for the tea." And the room dissolves into laughter yet again. More laughs already than in six years of Mick McCarthy press conferences.
Kerr looks a little as if he's been running on empty. Which he must be. Last Friday he was watching his under-20 side beat France and win an invitational tournament. Then he was talking on phones. He was flying on planes. He was meeting with suits. Last night, he got to his local, McDowell's, and called a few old friends. They talked late, told a few old stories about the old days and the old teams, about sunny afternoons when half of Belfield was covering for the lab technician who had gone off to train a team or watch a match.
And now this. Brian Kerr's first full day at work. A huge press conference in a mirrored ballroom. A necklace of jokes and one-liners and self-deprecations. Every hack in Ireland is squeezed in. Even Marian Finucane is here to hustle some face time. It's a long time since any Irish soccer occasion drew so many smiling faces into one place.
It's difficult sometimes to sum up why one person draws so much affection and respect form those around him, but Noel O'Reilly made a decent fist of it.
"It's his passion, his loyalty and his absolute humility in dealing with people and treating them with absolute respect," said Noel.
Kerr turned his head slowly and regarded his old friend.
"He's not bad with the bullshit either."
There's a lot of comedy and sentiment on the surface of this football relationship. Kerr and O'Reilly spark off each other to such an extent that they can almost finish each other's sentences, but what lies beneath the double-act public image is a shared intensity and a passion for detail and rightness.
It never gets said in connection with Saipan, and it will never be said by either Kerr or O'Reilly, but anyone who has spent any time with Kerr and O'Reilly knows that Roy Keane's personal unhappiness would have been their unhappiness as soon as it was expressed. Not because Keane is a world-class footballer but because Kerr and O'Reilly are world-class human beings and they are intuitive about the little differences in personality which make a team work.
"There'll be no angles," says Kerr talking about the future. "It will be straight. I think players will be inspired by our passion, I think we have the job because they recognise our passion." That passion is a lovely thing.
Last Friday morning, when they were closing their account with underage football, O'Reilly and Kerr sat and chatted. Noel remembered the beginning.
"Our first match, we started in March, 1997, in a tournament in Oporto, we drew 1-1. It was with France." Fate had bookended things nicely: the under-20s were playing France that afternoon. "Will we settle for a draw," said Noel with a little mischief.
"Nah, we'll go for it," replied Kerr.
O'Reilly knew he'd say that just like The Sundance Kid knew what Butch Cassidy would say. And they went out and beat France and brought home another trophy for the cabinet in Merrion Square.
It was a nice way to finish an enthralling chapter, and although there wasn't much time for lingering sentiment the odd moment caught in the throat.
"I realised when the national anthem was on that next time I stand for it will be in Scotland with the team. What a responsibility. I always thought it was a very proud and very special responsibility. I go back to when Liam Tuohy asked me in. He asked me to be involved with the international youth team as a trainer. I said, sure, I wouldn't know anything about injures. And he said, sure, you'd know if a fella had a broken leg, and I said well, yeah, and he said and anyway we have a team doctor.
"I'm extremely proud. Every time I have taken a team out I feel the personal responsibility of wanting things to be achieved through that team. I suffer a bit, but I enjoy the tension of it."
He began his international involvement back in 1985 in Tbilisi and in March his competitive life as senior manager begins back in Georgia. His team are, as he puts it, "behind an awkward ball at the moment" with no points gathered from a possible six. He throws his hands up and says he doesn't know a lot yet about that assignment because until Friday he was preparing to bring an under-20 team to the World Cup in March.
That's understandable, but he lets slip a glimpse of his calibre when he says, "I took in a few English matches on the sly in the last few weeks just on the off chance that the FAI might give me this job."
If he fails it won't be for want of preparation, perspective or analysis. Kerr hasn't been out of management since he was 15, but uniquely for someone operating at his level he comes from a background in the real world of having worked in a science lab at UCD for years.
It is that very ordinariness, the keen awareness of his own humility which draws people toward him and which created the groundswell of goodwill that lifted him into the job. He is thankful.
"It's all been very humbling . . . When I saw some of the stuff around, things said and written - I think it was genuine, it was very satisfying that people saw me in that light. It was reward for the relationships. I hope people felt I represented people and their dreams. Truly inspiring."
More than the success you wish for him, you hope that none of what is coming will change him.
