It is difficult to question the intuition that has served Mick McCarthy so well, but Tom Humphries can't help wondering what might have been.

The funny, ironic thing about how it all ended on Sunday night in Suwon is the manner in which our exit from the tournament crystallised the arguments between the Keanistas and the McCarthyites.

The Republic of Ireland's World Cup ended with one of those events which Keane would despise, the moral victory.

Which isn't to say that McCarthy didn't hate losing, just to recognise that the game threw up fodder for argument.

And argument there will be. Yesterday at his final press conference of this marathon journey McCarthy declined, wisely perhaps, to make any comment on the future of Roy Keane, but what was slightly surprising was the manager's determination to stay in his job until the European championship finals of 2004.

The whispers surrounding McCarthy for the last few weeks had suggested strongly that he was keen to move into club management. It now seems clear that McCarthy will be in the management job for the remainder of Keane's viable international career and the relationship between the two will continue to be a topic to fill the back pages.

As the dust settled and the scale of Ireland's achievements became clear it was natural to ask yesterday what might have been and to examine the anatomy of a second round game which we lost but by common consent should have won.

McCarthy has his own strong views, but starting at the end first, the analysis centred on the penalties and the half hour before it.

"Practising penalties is garbage" said Mick McCarthy in the heated aftermath and in those words he seemed to articulate the essential difference between the competing philosophies.

McCarthy is often intuitive about what works with players and it his view that letting those who feel up to it at the time take penalties is the best way.

There is a school of thought which argues that practising penalties can't be garbage though. Practising anything till it becomes a mechanical reflex has to be useful, that's why golfers practise three-foot putts till they are blue in the face.

Most of us have no idea what it is like to take a penalty in front of 40,000 people but highly paid footballers do. They play in front of that sort of crowd every week.

Does the notion of asking for volunteers create a psychological barrier while at the same time opening the back door of an excuse?

Would there not be more sense in appointing penalty takers number one to 11 at the start of a tournament letting everyone take care of their own practice at the end of training and let individual players visualise the moment and the atmosphere in anticipation?

Too many games these days are decided by penalties. Of 48 knockout games in the last three World Cups, 10 have ended in penalty shoot-outs. That's a better than 20 per cent chance of a game going to penalties. Is the notion of volunteers the best way?

"Please," said McCarthy yesterday, "don't use that as the basis for criticism. I have been involved in two of these penalty shoot-outs and the first one was won by us having a penalty taken by a guy who'd never taken a penalty . . .

"There were volunteers and five guys stepped up who scored. This time we missed three and they missed two and scored with a bad kick.

"Does that make their preparation better? What if I order guys to be penalty takers and they don't want to, they are uneasy about it?"

Judgement calls in other words. Opinions will continue to diverge but we will always wonder why, for instance, Mark Kinsella was number seven in the queue and Niall Quinn number six when both have taken shoot-out penalties at play-off games in Wembley. Who knows?

The admission of so many players after the game on Sunday that they had no idea during extra time that Spain were playing with 10 players seemed extraordinary too. How can a team exploit a weakness in the opposition if they don't know it exists?

It should be noted that most of the press box took just as long to realise that Spain were a player short. In the hurly burly at pitch-side it must have been difficult at that stage to even think let alone count.

McCarthy, however, was adamant that although his bench noticed the disparity in numbers a few minutes into the extra-time period, advance knowledge wouldn't have made a difference.

"We couldn't have had a more attacking formation, we couldn't have run harder or tried harder or stretched them more."

There were other smaller issues. Poor Ian Harte looked like a beaten docket psychologically when he stepped up to take his penalty during normal time but he was playing his best game of the tournament and is a reliable penalty taker normally. It was a call.

The introduction of David Connolly when the stronger, more aggressive Morrison was on the bench provoked a few questions. McCarthy noted that Connolly "had been absolutely on fire in training for a few weeks" and again we must bow to his expertise there.

Other decisions righted themselves. Leaving Kevin Kilbane on and playing Damien Duff out of position on the right seemed almost criminal for a while, what with McAteer and Reid sitting slavering on the bench.

But Duff enjoyed his best period of the tournament and Kilbane came back strongly in extra-time and for half an hour we always looked likely to score when moving forward.

In the end our departure was decorated with all the great Irish traits. Passion, hunger, drama and honour. It was a better way to leave than that which marked our exit from USA '94, when we went home after a whipping.

McCarthy brings all that passion and all that unique ability to motivate players to the table in any argument over technique.

There's an old baseball saying about management being a skill akin to holding a pigeon in your hand. Squeeze too tight and you kill it. Hold it too loose and it flies away on you.

Nobody is born knowing just how best to cup their hands but McCarthy's intuition on the matter has served him well.