Mick McCarthy has always preferred the away games. Even in these times of footballing recession when his team's presence around Dublin hardly provokes outbreaks of mass hysteria, the distractions of being at home are many and the benefits few.

It was with some relief that the Irish manager took his seat on the early morning flight to Amsterdam on Thursday, leaving behind a week of tabloid turmoil; facing the Dutch in contrast seems easy. Training in Amsterdam has been low-key but focused. McCarthy's team needed to put distance between themselves and unsavoury incidents. No place better than the training pitch.

"That's what we do. We're footballers, we come we train and we play. All the other stuff that goes with it, well it just has to be done. When it gets down to the football that's when we're happiest."

It hasn't been non-stop serenity and football. The cancellation of yesterday morning's training session and the difference in tone between the remarks made by the management and Roy Keane about his fitness gave rise to suspicion that all was not well.

The focus tonight in the Amsterdam Arena will be on three Irish players in particular. Roy Keane, for whom an occasion like this is bread and butter, Robbie Keane, and Richard Dunne who hasn't had a competitive match in months.

In articles as in team sheets Roy Keane comes first. McCarthy would trade any three of his other players to have Keane in the side tonight.

Louis Van Gaal, no less, was delaying Dutch team selection until he saw whether the Manchester United player would be named or not. Little wonder that the Irish began to stress Keane's fitness yesterday before naming him in the side. As last week passed and the casualties on both sides grew, the nature of the mind-games being played have changed constantly. By yesterday it was time for the Irish to stop showing their soft underbellies and to be a little upbeat.

Roy Keane's impact in the field is matched these days by his maturity off it. As a player who earns his daily bread at a site right beside the Posh and Becks carnival, he was inclined to the view that there is nothing new under the sun or in the Sun when it comes to footballers' antics, and that discussion of Phil Babb's first successful marking job in years could wait.

In a lengthy discourse during the week, he frankly admitted his dissatisfaction with his own performances at international level since his memorable appearances at the 1994 World Cup. It is that sense of the nation's best player still feeling he has something to prove which offers the best hope for this evening when much of his work will involve dropping back and sweeping in front of the unproven centre-back partnership.

With the Irish likely to line up in a 4-4-1-1 formation tonight, much will be made of the performance of Robbie Keane.

For Keane it has been a pleasingly quiet week. The fuss to be made over his first international appearance since his move from Coventry has been diminished by Babb and Kennedy's banishment. The player himself surprised many with his demeanour at a leisurely press conference on Thursday.

He said nothing of significance but it was the nerveless aplomb with which he said nothing which impressed most observers. He was just one pair of designer sunglasses away from superstardom.

His arrival into the circus which is Inter Milan football club as presided over by the egocentric Massimo Moratti has been accompanied by geysers of gushing copy and the odd word of caution, not least from the scout who discovered him, Eddie Corcoran.

Keane carried his expanded celebrity with apparent ease and was phlegmatic about the entire experience. For the moment he teeters on the verge of either well paid obscurity or megabucks fame. Suits him.

"Yeah I'm rooming with Seedorf," he said calmly on Thursday. "We've been winding each other up a little bit." The names just tripped off his tongue as if he'd grown up with them in Tallaght. Dunne, who did grow up with Keane in Tallaght and who rooms with him this week when Seedorf is busy with the Dutch, has the most to lose and the most to gain tonight.

His preparations have been far from ideal. In the middle of the five-match ban (a hangover from a zealous accumulation of disciplinary points while playing for Everton last year), he has faltered recently over a move to Wimbledon, where he would have had a chance to work the position to which he is suited, centre-half. Getting thrown into the slipstream of Patrick Kluivert in the Amsterdam Arena is a tough way to begin the working year.

The alternatives were scarcely more appetising. Dunne is at least a centre-half at heart. Moving Ian Harte in from the leftback position would have meant not just sacrificing the attacking qualities which Harte brings to his speciality position, but tossing in Steve Staunton, whose confidence and form appear to have skipped town.

About 50 minutes away in the Dutch countryside the hosts have been experiencing their own problems. Patrick Kluivert's early departure from training on Thursday sent the sort of shiver through Holland which hasn't been felt since just before the boy stuck his finger in the dam.

Louis Van Gaal's experience is the opposite to that which prophets usually receive in their own land. His six-year deal signed in July after Barcelona had wedged him out onto the dole queue was particularly welcomed here, where his successful tenure as youth manager and then senior manager breathed vitality back into the entire Ajax set-up .

If Mick McCarthy could have any three of the players not being used for one reason or another by Holland this week he would be a happy man. Look at the choice: Bergkamp, Bogarde, Stam, Davids, Overmars, Zenden, Van Nistelrooy, Mackay, Numan, Hasselbank.

McCarthy's struggles on with what he has got. He has been surprisingly upbeat and good humoured this week, handling the disciplinary matters as well as the media matters with decisiveness.

However, his assertion that "if we've got nine points after five games, we will be doing well" reads more disingenuously perhaps than it sounded when he uttered it to deflect pressure. Given the makeweights of the group, Estonia, Cyprus and Andorra, we should have nine points after five games; the competition is basically with Portugal and Holland. What we take off either of them will be the difference between second place and third when the counting is done.

Roy Keane is right. There is nothing new. McCarthy has always preferred away games because that's where the peace and focus is. He's dealt with having to leave Paul McGrath in his bed before travelling to a game, he's dealt with Phil Babb going entirely awol, with the sulk of John Aldridge and the absence of Roy Keane.

Nothing new. The Dutch face the representatives of a soccer culture which they despise tonight. News of Babb and Kennedy's roadshow was greeted with astonishment here during the week. Highly-paid athletes being out on the beer at all, let alone on the night before an important training session, is novel to the cerebral Dutch.

They could be forgiven for underestimating the Irish tonight. The hope has to be they do just that, that the form of the two Keanes is adequate and that Dunne isn't dismantled.

"Give me this anyday," said McCarthy in departing yesterday. "A big occasion against one of the great teams in the world. This is what it's all about. I'd choose this for us anytime."