Battered and bruised-looking after what he describes as "certainly the worst week of my life", Mick McCarthy fielded questions for the second last time at the Irish training base of Izumo yesterday. The opening game is looming large on the horizon and Cameroon await, but like the team, who travel down to Niigata tomorrow morning, the media are not yet quite ready to move on.

It was during the previous night here when the news broke that McCarthy would get neither his apology nor his best player back. By lunchtime, Roy Keane's decision to stay at home had at least removed some of the terrible uncertainty that had haunted Irish preparations for Saturday's game and kept many of the travelling party here - the manager included - awake at night trying to keep track of how the saga was progressing on the other side of the world.

Being no fool, of course, McCarthy knows that he is now on a hiding to nothing. The team is much less likely to make it out of an increasingly tough-looking group without their combative midfielder.

Even if they pull it off, though, it will never be enough for those people who will always speculate on how much further the Republic might have gone had Keano been around.

More than once during yesterday's press conference, McCarthy appealed for everyone to get behind the team. However, to silence his fiercest critics, he knows that Ireland winning this World Cup might not be enough - they would have to do it well.

McCarthy, though not as culpable as has been portrayed in some quarters, has clearly made mistakes over the past seven traumatic days, but he says this is not the time to reflect on what has happened.

Rather, the team must be picked up and play as if everything that has occurred since they arrived in Saipan nearly two weeks ago had gone more like a dream than the nightmare we have seen unfold.

"It's not easy, I can tell you," he admits, "because sometimes you get up in the morning so you can head off and motivate the lads and deep down the one that needs motivating most of all is you."

Asked about Keane, whose advisers had paved the way for his return by actually agreeing all the details of his proposed apology with the FAI, players and a representative of McCarthy on Tuesday, only for the 30-year-old to refuse to go through with the call at the last moment, the manager said simply that: "I'm glad it's finished with. Glad it's been dealt with.

"It has been," he added, "a regrettable incident and some of the younger players must wonder what's going on."

They're not, of course, the only ones.

There was a hint of resentment when he was asked whether he would depart after these finals and more as he referred to journalists at Tuesday evening's "media scrum" in the press centre as having been "on the hunt".

FAI general secretary Brendan Menton interrupted to say: "The last few days have brought Mick McCarthy and the association closer together and we are hoping that he will stay on as Ireland manager for many years to come."

However, since McCarthy has realised the extent to which public opinion abandoned him during the past few days, it's hard to see it happening. He has clearly been irritated by Keane's tendency to wrap himself up in a tricolour and then talk about the concern he felt for his family during all of this.

"It's too easy to say how much you care about your wife and kids," he said. "But I care about my wife and kids too. And I'll tell you what . . . all I've ever tried to do for Ireland, for my country, is play as well as I could and manage as best I could. And I'll tell you something, I think I've done a damn good job on both counts."

Predictably, though, he was most stung when asked, in effect, if he felt responsible for one of the world's greatest players not being at this tournament.

"Let me address that . . ." he came back fiercely, "that is now his decision."

Whether that ever becomes the generally accepted version of events is open to question, but McCarthy can be in no doubt about the fact that footballing history will judge his role more kindly if his team somehow defies its current handicap and does well during the coming weeks.

He is boosted at least by the news that Jason McAteer is again in contention for a place on the Republic's right flank after recovering more quickly than had been expected from a badly bruised knee. And he insisted yesterday that there was no cause for concern regarding Mark Kinsella, who sat out yesterday's training session.

"He was just resting his leg," McCarthy explained. "He had an operation, as you know, and he was just having a rest because he can't do everything quite yet, but Mark's trained exceptionally well over the past couple of weeks."

Even with an almost full squad to choose from before he names his team on Saturday, however, he admits that the team will have to continue to exceed the sum of its parts during its three group games if it is to make any real impact on these finals.

"People forget that we've got some very good players, though, as well as a couple of potentially great ones, so I'm confident that we can pick ourselves up and still do well."

He doesn't need telling that there's quite a few people who could do with some persuading.