WORLD CUP 2002: Nobody mentions the war. There are no Keano questions. No time is wasted pondering what might have been. Privately, if you ask a player or two they will say that whatever is achieved in Japan they'll always remember what he did to get them here, but what's done is done. Footballers move on, you chop the team's head off, it grows another one. It's the nature of the beast.

The World Cup has started. Not just officially but in the heads of the Irish. In Saipan, with the marble pitch and the vanishing star they could scarcely imagine it, this thing called the World Cup. For a while in Izumo they thought the whole affair would get mired in the controversy and they would come home and do what they had done for the few weeks away, answer questions about Roy Keane. The whole thing would be Groundhog Day.

Saturday's draw, though, gave something back to everyone. Just when you thought the best this World Cup could offer us was a diluted version of 1994, which was in turn a heavily-watered imitation of 1990, suddenly the innocence and enthusiasm is back. Instead it feels like 1990. We've handicapped ourselves heavily, we've had our death of the Di/Keane of hearts national saga and suddenly, last Saturday's performance got the juices going like we were young again.

Chiba is a soulless concrete jungle of a place but the heart of it, for the moment, is the new Otami Hotel where the team stay and where the punters flock for glimpses. The players' wives and girlfriends have arrived and under FIFA rules they all have the same hair colour. If you see a blonde head in Chiba, mind your manners, she's got connections.

Every morning the team train on the absurdly-perfect training pitch about 10 minutes' drive up the coast. Maybe 1,000 people gather every day to watch in a little cultural intersection which is always enjoyable to watch. The red-faced, sunburned Irish come to Chiba with hardened opinions and everything they see at training tends to reinforce their view. "Told ya, told ya, he's a bleedin' stick."

Mick McCarthy comes in and he's as chipper as you've seen him in years. He made a decision before this World Cup that he was going to enjoy it and if you can leave aside the fact the trip included what he describes as the worst week of his life, he's stuck to that. He loves the daily contact with players, the work on the training ground, the clack of studs and the yammer of bad jokes.

You could tell on Saturday after the game he was back to his old self. Before coming to the dreaded mixed zone to mix with media, the managers must be interviewed for the international broadcast feed by a glass of water who one suspects has just been expelled from a male model agency for being too dim. The interview was about to start when a platoon of the male model's aides invaded the shot and began fussing with him, doing his hair, buttoning his jacket, removing his credentials dangler, etc.

"Sorry about that," said the male model when he had been restored to perfection. "Fine," said Mick, "but I'll tell you what, you look exactly the same to me, mate." Poor fella was crushed.

Anyway Mick comes in every day after training and he lets his thoughts flow. Yesterday he was musing on tackling and, perhaps remembering his own days fondly, he spoke about all the ways in which one player might stop another and get away with it.

And then he seemed to catch himself on and wonder if his words would be taken out of context as a declaration of war. So he put those thoughts away again.

He mused, too, about Steven Reid, about how he'd had to tell the kid he'd been picked for his ability to play, not for his ability to make up the numbers in training. Reid had been so quiet and tentative on this trip that early on one almost expected to see him doing the odd bit of lawn-mowing on the practice pitch or gathering up the boots to give them a polishing.

He doesn't say much (you suspect he is stunned to be rooming with the sleep machine that is Damien Duff) but, as we bards like to put it, he does his talking on the pitch. You can see Reid growing in stature all the time, however, and when the other players speak about him there's a protectiveness about their words, because they see him as the next star, a player who can move to the centre of midfield and play box to box, like a Vieira or a guy from Mayfield.

"He can be top class," says McCarthy, who doesn't like to run off at the mouth about young fellas. "He can be whatever he wants to be."

They don't mention the war because every day has its own new contexts and moments. Yesterday Richard Dunne was explaining how welcoming the Japanese people have been and told us how they clap him going to training and they clap him on his way to his dinner. We all looked at big Richard and thought what a boost to the Japanese economy his three square meals a day must be, and suddenly everyone lost it and even when normality had returned you could see Shay Given a yard or two away trying to keep his mouth from turning up into a big grin.

They don't mention the war because the chemistry in the squad is changing by the day and is coming to settle in a satisfactory way. Once upon a time (circa the first Macedonia disaster) the manager worried that the younger players were so overawed by Roy Keane they sought him out and gave him the ball every chance they got and otherwise remained dumb on the field. Now a few years older and deprived of his massive presence they are handling themselves, thank you.

Gary Kelly, once the fly joker within the squad, has stepped up as a leader and galvanising force and if there is one picture from Niigata which tells a tale it is a shot of Kelly clenching his fist with every muscle in his neck visibly straining.

"We're all a bit moany at the back," says Shay Given of the company he keeps, "but Stan is that extra bit moany." And indeed Steve Staunton, who has gone to places where no Dundalk man has ever gone before, is the moaniest leader of them all. On the verge of his 100th cap tomorrow and playing his third World Cup (in his third different position) he is a quasi-manager, his importance stretching way beyond what he does on the field.

They are remarkable to watch as the wounds of Saipan heal. On the fine green pitch at Chiba they go about their business everyday as their polite hosts bow and smile and the sheer foreignness of it all, the sheer sense of voyage, brings them all together. They know this is one they'll tell the grandchildren about, this is one that has the innocence of Italia '90 about it and for most of them Italia '90 was what they dreamed of after bedtime. In the second half last Saturday they found something in themselves they weren't totally sure was there.

They don't mention the war because they have survived that. Making the best of the peace is what absorbs them now.